Highly dense ZnO nanowhiskers for the low level detection of p-hydroquinone

• Highly dense ZnO nanowhiskers are synthesized by the hydrothermal method.
• ZnO nanowhiskers are for the modification of GCE to detect p-hydroquinone.
• ZnO nanowhiskers modified GCE based sensor shows the rapid response to HQ chemical.
• A significantly high sensitivity of ~99.2 µA µM−1 cm−2 is achieved.

Highly dense ZnO nanowhiskers were obtained by the hydrothermal method and utilized as active working electrode material for the low level detection of p-hydroquinone. The morphological characterizations revealed that the synthesized nanomaterials exhibited the highly dense whiskers morphology with the average diameter of ~80–120 nm. The synthesized ZnO nanowhiskers were crystalline, highly pure and possessed wurtzite hexagonal structure. ZnO nanowhiskers modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) was used to fabricate the chemical sensor for the low level detection of p-hydroquinone. The fabricated chemical sensor attained substantially high sensitivity of ~99.2 µA µM−1 cm−2, the limit of detection (LOD) of ~4.5 µM, with correlation coefficient (R) of ~0.98144.