A facile route to ionic liquids-functionalized ZnO nanorods for the fluorometric sensing of thiabendazole drug

Abstract

In this report, we introduce a simple and cost-effective hydrothermal method for the functionalization of ZnO nanorods with three different ionic liquids (ILs (1–3)) to check their sensing response with various drugs including thiabendazole, phenylbutazone, chloramphenicol, neomycin, and theophylline through fluorescence spectroscopy. The rod like-microstructure and hexagonal wurtzite structure of synthesized ZnO nanorods were examined with SEM-EDS and XRD techniques. On the other hand, ionic liquids-functionalized ZnO nanorods (ILs (1–3)/ZnO) exhibited various self-organized (layered-sheet ~ IL1, distorted nanorods ~ IL2, peanut beaded surface ~ IL3/ZnO) structures due to the intercalation of ILs on the surface of ZnO nanorods. Compared to ZnO nanorods, ILs (1–3)/ZnO nanorods showed a blue shift in UV-absorption band which resulted to the variation in optical bandgap values. Ionic liquids-functionalized nanorods samples (ILs (1–3)/ZnO) have been selected for their recognition behaviour with available drug molecules using fluorescence spectroscopic technique. Interestingly, with the addition of thiabendazole drug molecules to two samples (ILs (1,3)/ZnO), a significant response corresponding to the peaks at ~350 nm and ~357 nm was observed, which led to the development of fluorescent sensors with a detection limit of 12 and 304 nM, respectively.