Facile Synthesis of NiO/ZnO nanocomposite as an effective platform for electrochemical determination of carbamazepine.

The pharmaceutical science demand for sustainable and selective electrochemical sensors which exhibit ultrasensitive capabilities for the monitoring of different drugs. In an attempt to build a useful electrochemical sensor, we describe a most efficient method for the fabrication of NiO/ZnO nanocomposite through aqueous chemical growth method. The successfully synthesized NiO/ZnO nanocomposite is successfully employed to modify a glassy carbon electrode in order to build a sensitive and reliable electrochemical sensor for the detection of carbamazepine (CBZ), an anticonvulsant drug. The morphological texture, functionalities and crystalline structure of prepared nanocomposite were determined via FTIR, XRD, EDX, TEM, and SEM analysis. In order to examine the charge transfer kinetics, the cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were used to exploit the electrochemical properties of the synthesized nanocomposite. The NiO/ZnO nanocomposite exhibited excellent electron transfer kinetics and less resistive behavior than the individual NiO and ZnO nanoparticles. The differential pulse voltammetry and cyclic voltammetry tools were used for the fluent determination of CBZ. Certain parameters were optimized to develop an effective method including optimum scan rate 60 mV/s, potential range from 0.4 to 1.4 V and BRB as supporting electrolyte with pH 3. The developed sensor showed exceptional response for CBZ under the linear dynamic range from 5 to 100 μM. The limit of detection of proposed NiO/ZnO sensor for the CBZ was calculated to be 0.08 μM. The analytical approach of prepared electrochemical sensor was investigated in different pharmaceutical formulation with acceptable percent recoveries ranging from 96.7 to 98.6%.