Hexagonal cadmium oxide nanodisks: Efficient scaffold for cyanide ion sensing and photo-catalytic applications

• Facile low-temperature growth of crystalline hexagonal CdO nanodisks.
• A potential high-efficient photocatalyst.
• An effective material to fabricate cyanide sensor.

Herein, we report the large-scale low-temperature aqueous solution based synthesis of hexagonal-shaped cadmium oxide (CdO) nanodisks. The synthesized nanodisks were characterized in detail to investigate the morphological, structural, optical and compositional properties using various analytical tools. The detailed characterizations revealed that the synthesized CdO nanodisks are grown in high-density, possessing well-crystallinity with cubic crystal phase and exhibiting good optical properties. Further, the prepared CdO nanodisks were used as efficient scaffold for cyanide ion sensor and photocatalyst applications. A luminescent sensor for the determination of cyanide ion in aqueous solution was fabricated based on synthesized CdO nanodisks. The fabricated luminescent sensor exhibited an extremely low detection limit (~1.40 μmol L−1) towards cyanide ion which is significantly lower than the maximum permitted value of cyanide ion by United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for drinking water (7.69 μmol L−1). The interference studies of the fabricated sensor also demonstrate excellent selectivity towards cyanide ions compared to other coexisting ions. As a photocatalyst, the synthesized CdO nanodisks exhibited high photodegradation (~99.7%) of toxic methyl orange dye just in 90 min using 0.25 g of CdO nanodisks.

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