Strongly coupled design of zinc oxide-nanorods/copper tin sulfide-nanoflowers nanostructures: An electrochemical study in 4-nitrochlorobenzene detection

Developing efficient electrode materials for detecting 4-nitrochlorobenzene (4-NCB) is highly desirable for living organisms and environmental safety. Herein, we designed a hierarchical 1D-2D nanostructure of zinc oxide nanorods@copper tin sulfide nanoflowers (ZnO-NRs@CTS-NFs) by a facile hydrothermal synthesis route for electrochemical detection of 4-NCB. The ZnO-NRs@CTS-NFs modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance for 4-NCB, much higher than that of bare GCE, ZnO-NRs/GCE, and CTS-NFs/GCE. Such a desirable electrocatalytic performance is attributed to the large surface area, rich active sites, fast electron transfer through local pn junctions of CTS NFs on ZnO NRs, and the synergistic effect of the as-prepared ZnO-NRs@CTS-NFs nanocomposite. Under optimum conditions, the fabricated ZnO-NRs@CTS-NFs/GCE provides a trace-level detection limit with a wide detection range and high sensitivity. Besides, the fabricated electrochemical sensor displays good selectivity and reproducibility for 4-NCB detection. The practical application of the ZnO-NRs@CTS-NFs modified GCE exhibits satisfactory results in determining 4-NCB in river water, pond water, and industrial wastewater. These results demonstrate that the as-prepared ZnO-NRs@CTS-NFs nanostructures might be one of the most promising electrode materials for 4-NCB detection.