Zinc Oxide Nanorods Wrapped with Ion-Imprinted Polypyrrole Polymer for Picomolar Selective and Electrochemical Detection of Mercury II Ions

This study concerns the design of an ion-imprinted polymer (IIP) for the selective detection of mercury II ions. Compared to other electrochemical studies, the originality of this work lies to the fact that the IIP was electropolymerized on ZnO nanorods, which were themselves grown on gold/diazonium modified substrates. This strategy of diazonium salt and ZnO nanorods permits to increase considerably the specific surface and thus to improve the sensor’s performances. The limit of detection (LOD) of the designed sensor was of order of 1 pM, the lowest value ever reported in literature.