Chemiresistive Sensing of Nitroaromatic Compounds Using Imidazolate MOF

Here, we have synthesised two 2-ethylimidazolate based metal organic framework (MOF) using Cobalt (II) Nitrate Hexahydrate and Zinc Nitrate Hexahydrate as a metal ions source under certain experimental conditions. Different spectroscopic and microscopic techniques have been used for synthesis conformation of Zn-ethyl imidazole (Zn-Eim) and Co-ethyl imidazole (Co-Eim). On confirmation of chemiresistive sensing ability of MOFs, different concentrations of three nitro explosive compounds, i.e., Nitrobenzene (NB), 1,4-dinitrobenzene (DNB) and 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (TNP) have been tested against MOFs under certain experimental conditions. Here, we find that Zn-Eim shows a good sensing response only for DNB among other selected nitroaromatic compounds. It shows 0.424 ppb limit of detection (LOD) with the linearity R² value i.e.,0.8983. Our research work shows that Zn-Eim have excellent potential capability over Co-Eim and may explored as efficient chemiresistive sensing materials for real world applications in future.