Electrochemical behavior of an antiviral drug acyclovir at fullerene-C60-modified glassy carbon electrode

Abstract

Electrochemical oxidation of acyclovir at fullerene-C60-modified glassy carbon electrode has been investigated using cyclic and differential pulse voltammetry. In pH 7.4 phosphate buffer, acyclovir showed an irreversible oxidation peak at about 0.96V. The cyclic voltammetric results showed that fullerene-C60-modified glassy carbon electrode can remarkably enhance electrocatalytic activity towards the oxidation of acyclovir. The electrocatalytic behavior was further exploited as a sensitive detection scheme for the acyclovir determination by differential pulse voltammetry. Effects of anodic peak potential (Ep/V), anodic peak current (Ip/μA) and heterogeneous rate constant (k0) have been discussed. Under optimized conditions, the concentration range and detection limit were 9.0×10−8 to 6.0×10−6M and 1.48×10−8M, respectively. The proposed method was applied to acyclovir determination in pharmaceutical samples and human biological fluids such as urine and blood plasma as a real sample. This method can also be employed in quality control and routine determination of drugs in pharmaceutical formulations.