An electrochemical sensing platform based on hollow mesoporous ZnO nanoglobules modified glassy carbon electrode: Selective detection of piperidine chemical

• Carbon spheres template assisted sonochemical process for the synthesizing of hollow ZnO nanoglobules.
• Hollow ZnO nanoglobules are applied as electron mediator electrode for the fabrication of piperidine chemical sensor.
• Hollow mesoporous ZnO nanoglobules modified GCE presents a rapid sensing response towards piperidine chemical.
• A very high sensitivity of ∼59.9 μA mM−1 cm−2 is observed.

Hollow mesoporous ZnO nanoglobules were synthesized through carbon spheres template assisted sonochemical process followed by annealing at 600 °C. The synthesized hollow mesoporous ZnO nanoglobules was applied as a working electrode or electron mediator electrode for the fabrication of reproducible, highly sensitive and reliable chemical sensors for the detection of piperidine chemical. The synthesized nanomaterials possessed the porous hollow globular morphology due to the radial arrangement of nanoparticles on the outer shell of nanoglobules. The formation of hollow mesoporous ZnO nanoglobules was confirmed by analyzing the structural, crystalline and the compositional properties. The electrochemical behavior was examined by performing the cyclic voltammetry using hollow mesoporous ZnO nanoglobules based glassy carbon electrode (GCE) towards the detection of piperidine chemical. The performance of piperidine chemical sensor based on hollow mesoporous ZnO nanoglobules GCE was analyzed by measuring the current (I)–voltage (V) characteristics of different piperidine concentrations in phosphate buffer solution. The hollow ZnO nanoglobules GCE based piperidine chemical sensor exhibited the high sensitivity of ∼59.9 μA mM−1 cm−2 and a detection limit of ∼3.3 μM with a correlation coefficient (R) of ∼0.98782 and a short response time of 10 s.