Resume  

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        In this brief report, I will present an idea about my  work.

 

My master's work is a tri collaboration between Tunisia, Italy, and Saudi Arabia under the supervision of Mr.Ramzi Maâlej and the co-supervision of Mrs. Nour HAmza Belkhir. The aim of this work is the development of two-dimensional (2D) sensing materials. Here, we have been interested in the transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) family, where we have chosen the tungsten disulfide (WS2)  due to its fascinating properties. The WS2 nanosheets (NS) were exfoliated using the ultrasonic method known also as the liquid phase exfoliation (LPE) technique, then, coated with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) that were synthesized using the Turkevish-Frens procedure. The pure WS2, AuNPs, and hybrid Au@WS2 were characterized by several techniques. To study the optical and structural of WS2 NPs, we have used Raman and UV-Vis spectroscopy. Based on Raman data, the WS2 NS number of layers was determined.  Using UV-Vis findings, the concentration, length, and number of layers of the nanosheets were determined. For AuNPs, the UV-Vis spectroscopy was employed to determine the localized Surface Plasmon Resonant (LSPR) was determined. The hybrid Au@WS2 was used as SERS/PIERS substrates to detect 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (MBA) at low traces. Later, SERS and PIERS techniques were employed to check the efficiency of our substrates. The obtained data figure out significant findings, where the Raman signals were strongly enhanced for both SERS and PIERS substrates. Indeed, the use of PIERS substrate has shown the most important Raman signals enhancement (4 times than that of SERS). The fruit of this outstanding work is published in 2020 in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

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Owing to this amazing work, my thesis was under the joint supervision of University of Sfax-Tunisia and University of Messina-Italy (2019-2022).  In fact, I work in two type of sensors; the plasmonic sensors similar to my master work, and the electrochemical sensors.  During these three years, I synthesised three different TMDCs  materials; molybdenum disulphide (MoS2), tungsten disulphide (WS2), and molybdenum selenide (MoSe2). Using the liquid-phase exfoliation, I synthesised their nanosheets that I used them later to develop electrochemical and plasmonic sensors either pure or nanocomposite forms. Herein, I worked with graphene oxide (GO) to create GO@WS2 nanocomposite that shows fascinating findings for the determination of Thiram fungicide at low concentrations. Moreover, I worked with two different shapes of 2D-gold ; gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and gold nanorods (AuNRds). Hence, I created AuNps@MoS2 using the impregnation method for the development of Folic acid (FA) using electroanalytical technique and we found a different a new sensing mechanism using this platform. I succeed to synthesis AuNPs using green synthesis path and the average size of these nanoparticles was 50nm with average spherical shape that were used later to create AuNps@MoSe2 nanocomposite. These platform shows fascinating performance toward the determination of neurotransmitter molecule. The AuNps and the AuNrds illustrate crucial performance as plasmonic sensors toward the determination of dye molecules. 

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During this work, I gained an important knowledge and expertise for Raman, Ultra-violet (UV) and photoluminescence (PL) setup as well as the potentiate for the electrochemical sensors. 

         

The outstanding results described briefly above have been published in an impacted journals as follows:

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 Publications  

 

1) Khouloud Abid, Daniela Lannazzo, Consuelo Celesti, Amani Khaskhoussi, Antonino Foti, Ramzi Maalej, Pietro G Gucciardi, Giovanni Neri 

A novel 2D-GO@WS2 electrochemical platform for the determination of thiram fungicide

Journal of Environmental Sciences,

DOI: 10.1016/j.jes.2022.11.018

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2) Khouloud Abid,  Rayhane Zribi, Ramzi Maalej, Antonino Foti, Amani Khaskhoussi, Pietro G Gucciardi, Giovanni Neri 

Electrochemical and Sensing Properties of AuNps-2D-MoS2/SPCE for Folic Acid Determination

FlatChem, Volume 36, November 2022, 100433

DOI:10.1016/j.flatc.2022.100433

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3) Khouloud Abid, Nour H Belkhir, Ratiba Wali, Ramzi Maâlej

Chapter book: Chapter3: Properties of 2D materials

Elsevier Science

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4) Khouloud Abid, Nour H Belkhir, Sultan B Jaber, Rayhane Zribi, Maria Grazia Donato, G Di Marco, Pietro G Gucciardi, Giovanni Neri, Ramzi Maâlej

Photoinduced Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy with Hybrid Au@WS2 Nanosheets

The Journal of Physical Chemistry C  2020, 124, 37, 20350–20358

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.0c04664

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