Synthesis of CeO2-ZnO nanoellipsoids as potential scaffold for the efficient detection of 4-nitrophenol

Well-crystalline CeO2-ZnO composite nanoellipsoids (NEs) were synthesized by facile hydrothermal process at low-temperature and characterized in detail in terms of their morphological, structural, optical and compositional properties. The detailed characterizations revealed that the synthesized CeO2-ZnO NEs are pure, grown in high density, possessing well-crystallinity and exhibiting good optical properties. Finally, the prepared NEs were used as efficient electron mediators for the fabrication of 4-nitrophenol chemical sensors. The fabricated sensor exhibited a reliable and reproducible sensitivity of similar to 0.120 mu A/nM cm(2) and detection limit of 1.163 mu M. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report in which CeO2-ZnO NEs were used as efficient electron mediators for the fabrication of 4-nitrophenol chemical sensors. The presented work demonstrates that simply prepared nanocomposites can effectively be used for the fabrication of efficient, reliable and robust chemical sensors. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.