Bifunctional bimetallic heterojunction material based on Al2O3/ZnO micro flowers for electrochemical sensing and catalysis.

We report the synthesis, characterization, electrochemical sensing and catalytic capability of the bimetallic heterojunction Al2O3/ZnO micro flowers (AZ MFs). In order to prepare this bifunctional material, the facile hydrothermal process was adopted. The material was thoroughly characterized for the crystal structure and morphology with Powder XRD, XPS and FE-SEM. The investigation of electrochemical sensing was done using hydroquinone (HQ) and the chemical catalysis was using rhodamine B (RhB) with our bimetallic Al2O3/ZnO micro flowers as these are harmful industrial pollutants. The process parameters like the influence of scan rate and pH was efficiently optimized for the electrochemical detection of HQ and kinetics for the time dependent catalytic degradation of RhB dye. The linear relationship between the peak current and the concentration of HQ was found to be in the range of 0.125-20.25 µM with an impressive detection limit of 11.2 nM. In the chemical catalytic degradation of the RhB dye, our bimetallic material thrived well during the reaction and degraded the material in 10 min. The performance of bimetallic Al2O3/ZnO micro flowers towards HQ detection and RhB degradation shows good stability, reproducibility and it can be efficiently utilized to treat the environmental pollutants.