Effect of Praseodymium on the Characteristics of Nano-ZnO Towards Organophosphate as a Nano-Electrochemical Device

In this work an attempt of an electrochemical nano-device fabrication is presented by using doped/undoped ZnO to determine the electrochemical properties against organophosphate (chlorpyrifos). The required nanomaterial was synthesized using hydrothermal method. Praseodymium was used as dopant to ZnO for varied electrochemical characteristics in a 1:1 and 1:10 ratio. Synthesized material was characterized with FESEM, XRD, UV-Vis and FTIR spectroscopic techniques that showed nanosized particles with slight agglomeration and polycrystalline nature. The nano-device was fabricated using screen printing of synthesized powder on screen printed gold electrodes and used for determining the electrochemical characteristics for various concentrations of organophosphate (OP, 0.01 to 100 PPM). The characteristics were estimated with and without acetylcholinesterase (AChE) immobilization on the nanomaterial. Attempt was made to recover the device performance using commercial atropine solution. The study clearly indicated possibility of developing a nanodevice that can easily detect the 10 PPB concentration of OP in water solution, making it a much needed device for food and agro-industries.