This work describes a straightforward method using one-step preparation of graphene/nickel nanocomposite materials from low-cost materials including graphene oxide and nickel metal. Repetitive CVs lead to the simultaneous deposition of metallic nickel nanoparticles and reduced graphene oxide sheets onto glassy carbon electrode. The obtained nanocomposite-modified surfaces were characterised by cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry and field emission scanning electron microscopy. The result demonstrated the ability to produce nickel nanoparticles with a small size of about 20 nm, uniformly dispersed on a graphene oxide matrix. The ERGO-NiNP nanocomposite could be used as a sensor material exhibiting high performance; it is used here in order to detect Sunset Yellow (SY) and for quantification in complex media. The sensor enables rapid quantification of SY with a good linearity (R² = 0.996) in the range of 10–1000 nM, together with a low detection limit of 3.7 nM (equivalent to 1.7 µg L⁻¹) and a high sensitivity up to 7 µA/µM. The sensor also displays high reliability with a RSD value = 1.08 (n = 10) and good reusability (signal response variation below 5% after 5 detection/cleaning cycles). Finally, we demonstrate how this GCE/ERGO-NiNP sensor can be used for the successful determination of SY in commercial soft drink samples with an acceptable deviation below 6.4% when compared to HPLC method.

In this work, we investigate a novel approach to prepare high-performance alpha-particle solid sources fabricated on diamond thin support layers, offering the properties of diamond such as a low-Z material with corrosion and mechanical hardness. As-prepared solid sources onto boron-doped-diamond (BDD) substrate exhibited high performance of the autoradiography and spectroscopic resolution at the level of other more conventional materials such as stainless steel. A straightforward precipitation process in the Na₂SO₄ or NaNO₃ simple electrolytes under mild experimental conditions with a low current of several mA.cm⁻² were successfully developed onto BDD substrates for deposition of single ²⁴¹Am as well as ²³⁹Pu, ²⁴¹Am, and ²⁴⁴Cm mixed radionuclides. The results demonstrate that solid sources deposited onto such BDD substrates can match the performance of those prepared onto stainless steel substrates with excellent uniformity and high-resolution spectroscopy, together combining the robustness, chemical resilience, and X-ray transparence of the diamond. Alpha-particle spectra exhibiting a low full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 12.5 keV at the energy of 5.485 MeV (²⁴¹Am) could be practically obtained for BDD substrates.