Electrochemical behavior and simultaneous determination of dihydroxybenzene isomers at a functionalized SBA-15 mesoporous silica modified carbon paste electrode

Abstract

The simultaneous voltammetric determination of dihydroxybenzene isomers was investigated using cyclic and differential pulse voltammetries at the amino-functionalized SBA-15 mesoporous silica-modified carbon paste electrode (NH2-SBA15/CPE) in phosphate buffer solution (pH 6.0). The NH2-SBA15/CPE showed a larger peak current and higher selectivity for the dihydroxybenzene isomers in comparison with the bare carbon paste electrode (CPE) and SBA-15 mesoporous silica-modified carbon paste electrode (SBA15/CPE). The oxidation peak potential difference between hydroquinone (HQ) and catechol (CC) was 115mV and was 396mV between catechol and resorcinol (RC). This indicated that catechol, resorcinol and hydroquinone could be identified entirely at the NH2-SBA15/CPE. Under the optimized conditions, the amperometric currents were linear over ranges from the following: 0.8–160μmolL−1 for hydroquinone, 1.0–140μmolL−1 for catechol and 2.0–160μmolL−1 for resorcinol. The detection limits were 0.3, 0.5 and 0.8μmolL−1, respectively. The proposed electrode can be applied to the simultaneous determination of dihydroxybenzene isomers in mixtures without previous chemical or physical separations.