Fabrication of flower-like nickel cobalt-layered double hydroxide for electrochemical detection of carbendazim

The development of highly-efficient electrocatalysts is crucial to detect carbendazim (CDM) residue in the environment. Herein, nickel cobalt-layered double hydroxide (NiCo-LDH) is synthesized as an electrocatalyst to modify the glassy carbon electrode (GCE) for the electrochemical detection of CDM. The as-prepared NiCo-LDH is studied by various microscopic and spectroscopic characterizations. The NiCo-LDH exhibits strong electrochemical activity at the anodic potential of +0.87 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) towards CDM sensing. The NiCo-LDH based electrochemical sensor for CDM detection shows superior performance, including a low limit of detection of 0.001 µM, good sensitivity of 3.38 µA µM−1 cm−2, and a wide dynamic linear range from 0.006 to 14.1 µM. The superior results are attributed to numerous advantages of the NiCo-LDH, such as rapid electron transfer ability, high surface area, tunable texture, and good conductivity. The proposed sensor is exploited for the detection of CDM in spiked river-water samples with favorable recovery values. The good analytical performance for CDM detection suggests that the fabricated NiCo-LDH based electrochemical sensor has great application potential in real-time analysis.