Bare and cationic surfactants capped tungsten trioxide nanoparticles based hydrazine chemical sensors: A comparative study

•Synthesis of bare and cationic surfactant functionalized WO3 nanoparticles.•Efficient utilization WO3 nanoparticles for the electrochemical sensing of hydrazine.•Fabrication of high-sensitive and reproducible hydrazine chemical sensor. Herein, we report the fabrication and characterization of electrochemical sensors based on bare- and cationic surfactants with different chain lengths and counter ions capped-tungsten trioxide (WO3) nanoparticles. Four different cationic surfactants, i.e., tetradecyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (TTAB),cetylpyridinium chloride (CPyC), cetylpyridinium bromide (CPyB) and hexadecyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (HTAC) were used for the capping of WO3 nanoparticles. The prepared bare and capped WO3 nanoparticles were characterized in terms of their morphological, structural and compositional properties which revealed that the prepared nanoparticles possess mono-dispersity, spherical shape and monoclinic crystal phases. Finally, the prepared nanoparticles were used to fabricate electrochemical sensors for the detection of hydrazine. Our report describes massive comparison of current responses, monitored through cyclic voltammetry for bare and surfactant capped-WO3nanoparticles (NPs). The sensitivity values of the fabricated amperometric sensors range from 3.38 to 10 (μA/μMcm2) with limits of detection ranging from 29 to 59μM.