Electrochemical Formation of Nanostructured Gold Surfaces on Glassy Carbon for the Determination of Dopamine

Abstract

AbstractNanostructured gold surfaces were prepared by potentiostatic, potentiodynamic or galvanostatic Au electrodeposition on glassy carbon electrodes. The nanostructured gold electrodes (nsAu/GC) were used for the determination of dopamine (DA) in aqueous media. A directly proportional relationship was found between the peak current for DA (obtained by square wave voltammetry, SWV) and its concentration for all cases. However, the best performance for DA determination was attained with potentiodynamically electrodeposited surfaces. The SWV peak current was linearly dependent on DA concentration up to 10 μM, with a detection limit (3σ) of 0.57 μM, and a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.9966. A study on the effect of common interfering species such as ascorbic acid (AA) and uric acid (UA) on DA determination was also carried out. The use of a nanostructured surface gives rise to peaks for AA and UA that appear at 0.15–0.20 V above the peak potential for DA. The detection limit obtained for dopamine is below 1 μM in the presence of 0.1 mM AA and 0.1 mM UA. Thus, nanostructuring of glassy carbon surfaces with gold conveniently and easily improves the detection of DA in the presence of their principal interfering species.