Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Colloids and Surfaces A journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/colsurfa Rapid sensing response for phenol with CuO nanoparticles Rizwan Wahab a,b, *, Farheen Khan c , Naushad Ahmad d , Manawwer Alam d , Javed Ahmad a,b , Abdulaziz A. Al-Khedhairy a a Zoology Department, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia b Chair for DNA Research, Zoology Department, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia c Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Taibah University, Madina (Yanbu), Saudi Arabia d Department of Chemistry, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia GRAPHICALABSTRACT ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Copper oxide nanoparticles Chronoamperometry Electrochemical Sensor Glassy carbon electrode Modifed electrode Phenol ABSTRACT The human beings are directly or indirectly afected with the environmental pollution, excreted from the in- dustries in the form of liquids such as inorganic and organic hazardous material. As compared to the inorganic chemicals, the organic aromatic compounds are more toxic for the nature. The phenol (PhOH), which is one the largest applied organic compounds in industries and hose hold chemical, which afect to the human health. Due to the wide applicability of copper oxide (CuO) nanomaterial in numerous areas such as optoelectronics, pho- tocatalysis, solar cells, and energy evolution etc; easy to process and provide enhanced and rapid detectible responses against phenol is utilized in this study. The CuO-NPs were synthesized at low refuxing (at 65°C, 90 min) temperature and were well characterize via XRD (X-ray difraction pattern), FESEM (Field emission scanning electron microscopy), TEM (Transmission electron microscopy) and FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy), revels the spherical shaped morphology (∼10 nm). The NPs were pasted on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) to ascertain their sensing efciency against PhOH via three electrode system. The efciency of modifed electrode was evaluated under diferent parameters,concentration efect of PhOH (very low, mid and high) (1, 10 and 31 μL/100 mL of PBS) tested and discloses that the sensor efciency is very high and con- centrationdependentatalldetectablelimits.Theformedsensorwasalsotestedwithdiferent potentials from1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 mV/s and it’s sequential to the potential. The chronoamperometry (CuO-NPs/GCE) was investigatedinabsenceandpresenceandofPhOHatfourdiferentvoltages+0.05to+1.2V from0to1500s to observe the efect of time, which is time reliant. The reproducibility and stability were also tested in terms of cyclic response for seven days (RSD 2.13%), which further displayed that the processed sensor is much reliable for a longer period. To understand well, furthermore, a possible mechanism was also presented, based on ob- tained results. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfa.2020.125424 Received 17 May 2020; Received in revised form 26 July 2020; Accepted 12 August 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at:Zoology Department, College of Science, P.O. Box 2455, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. E-mail address: rwahab@ksu.edu.sa (R. Wahab). Colloids and Surfaces A 607 (2020) 125424 Available online 19 August 2020 0927-7757/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T