Ultra-sensitive hydrazine chemical sensor based on high-aspect-ratio ZnO nanowires

High-aspect-ratio ZnO nanowires based ultra-sensitive hydrazine amperometric sensor has been fabricated which showed a high and reproducible sensitivity of 12.76 mu Acm(-2) nM(-1), detection limit, based on S/N ratio, 84.7 nM, response time less than 5 s, linear range from 500 to 1200nM and correlation coefficient of R = 0.9989. This is the first report in which such a very high-sensitivity and low detection limit has been achieved for the hydrazine sensors by using ZnO nanostructures modified electrodes. Therefore, this work opens a way to utilize simply grown ZnO nanostructures as an efficient electron mediator to fabricate efficient hydrazine sensors. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.