Design and development of graphene intercalated V 2 O 5 nanosheets based electrochemical sensors for effective determination of potentially hazardous 3,5–Dichlorophenol

Abstract In the present work, we present the facial synthesis of reduced graphene oxide (Gr) intercalated–vanadium pentoxide (Gr–V 2 O 5 ) nanosheets with varying wt % of graphene oxide (GO) (1 wt% – 5 wt%) into V 2 O 5 layers. Physio–chemical properties of as prepared V 2 O 5 and Gr–V 2 O 5 nanosheets were characterized by XRD, XPS, Raman, FTIR, FESEM and HRTEM techniques. Results reveals that the Gr was effectively intercalated into V 2 O 5 nanostructures and morphology of V 2 O 5 was tuned from nanorods to nanosheets. Further, the Gr–V 2 O 5 nanosheets on modified glassy carbon electrode (Gr–V 2 O 5 /GCE) was fabricated and utilized for electrochemical characterization. Under the optimized conditions, the modified electrodes is a simple and versatile tool for electrochemical detection of potentially hazardous 3,5–Dichlorophenol (DCp) with the wide concentration range between 1.9 × 10 −8  M to 2.2 × 10 −4  M. The modified electrode possesses highly selective and it can able to detect DCp at nanomolar concentration (5 nM) with a high sensitivity of 0.3577 μAμM −1 . The modified electrode exhibits good reproducibility, high stability and also has promising electrochemical oxidation behavior of DCp in environmental samples even in presence of common interfering electroactive species. In view of analytical application, our proposed sensor could be directly employed for the electrochemical detection of DCp in industrial wastes, river water and sediment soil dispersion, without any pre–treatment.