Synthesis of mesoporous NiO nanosheet and its application on mercury (II) sensor

NiO nanosheets with uniformly distributed mesoporosity were successfully synthesized on a large scale by calcination of beta-Ni(OH)(2) nanosheet precursor, which was simply prepared using 1,6-hexanediamine-assisted solution approach. The as-prepared mesoporous NiO nanosheets have been introduced for the first time for the sensing of mercury ions, which were found to be useful for selective electrochemical detection of Hg2+ with a linear range of 0.8 to 500 mu M in pH 6.0 phosphate-buffered solutions, providing us another opportunity for exploring new electrochemical application of NiO nanomaterials.