Advanced Aqueous Ammonia Monitoring by Perceptive Chemi-Sensor for Environmental Safety

Environmental pollution is one of the global hot issues and need an urgent demand to detect and monitor the pollutants which affect the environment. Ammonia is one of the organic pollutants which cause severe harmful effect on environment due to its toxic nature. Therefore, electrochemical sensor has been fabricated using CeO2 nanoparticles (NPs) as a redox mediator to detect aqueous ammonia for environmental safety. The electrical response of the ethanol sensor was investigated by I-V technique which exhibited high sensitivity (0.3519 μA.cm-2.mM-1) and lower limit of detection (LOD = 0.395 μM). CeO2 nanoparticles were synthesized hydrothermally at low temperature and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), and Raman spectroscopy corroborated that the synthesized product is aggregated form of spherical nanoparticles, well crystalline possessing cubic phase with an average size of ~ 50 ± 10 nm. UV-Visible absorption spectrum confirmed that CeO2 nanoparticle is optically active with absorption band of 297 nm. Keywords: CeO2 nanoparticles, Structural properties, Optical properties, Ammonia chemi-sensor