Simple Fabrication of Mesoporous Praseodymium Cerate via an Eco-Friendly Route for Development of Carbendazim Electrochemical Sensor

Abstract

This study introduces an easy and efficient ultrasonic-assisted approach for the preparation of mesoporous praseodymium cerate (MS-Pr2Ce2O7) by employing maltose as a novel and eco-friendly capping agent. Some techniques such as field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were used for the characterization of nanoparticles. For the detection of carbendazim (CBZ), a new electrochemical sensor based on the modified screen-printed electrode (SPE) has been presented. The modification of the electrode surface was made using of praseodymium cerate. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) has been utilized to study the electrochemical behavior of the MS-Pr2Ce2O7/SPE and better electrochemical performance was observed compared to bare SPE for the oxidation of CBZ. The optimization of pH and accumulation time was done. Under optimized conditions (pH=7 and accumulation time:160 s), the oxidation peak currents that responded to CBZ concentration between 0.01 and 175.0 µM exhibited a linear relationship (R2 = 0.9977) and the detection limit was calculated 4.6 nM. In addition, MS-Pr2Ce2O7/SPE showed high stability and repeatability. At last, real sample tests of the MS-Pr2Ce2O7/SPE were validated by applying them to the detection of CBZ in vegetable samples, which were found to be promising in our preliminary experiments.