Ytterbium Doped Zinc Oxide Nanopencils for Chemical Sensor Application

Herein, we report a facile synthesis, characterization and chemical sensing application of ytterbium (Yb) doped ZnO nanopencils. The nanopencils were synthesized by facile hydrothermal process and characterized by several techniques in terms of their morphological, structural, compositional and Raman-scattering properties. The detailed morphological properties confirmed that the nanopencils are grown in high density with an average length and diameter in the range of similar to 4 +/- 1 mu m and similar to 100 +/- 50 nm, respectively. The synthesized nanopencils were used as effective electron mediator to fabricate high sensitive nitroaniline chemical sensor. The fabricated nitroaniline chemical sensor based on Yb-doped ZnO nanopencils exhibited high sensitivity of similar to 2.701 mu A.mM(-1)cm(-2), experimental detection limit of 0.313 mM and linear dynamic range of 0.625-5.0 mM.