Abstract

Environmental pollution is one of the major concerns nowadays. Heavy metals play a determining role in deteriorating the environment around us, and mercury is among the top metals responsible for this due to its high toxicity. Thus, it is necessary to identify and minimize the contamination, and effective electroanalytical techniques are necessary to determine the concentration of the toxic metal ion at ever lower levels. The electrochemical detection of mercury(II) at a bare gold microelectrode is investigated and reported here. Linear sweep voltammetry and square wave voltammetry were used to determine low mercury concentration (5 nM) via its stripping. The supporting electrolyte was 0.1 M nitric acid. The Hg-deposition was done at -0.5 V and aided by alternating current (ac) heating, while Hg-stripping was performed at room temperature. The LOD for the developed method was 0.94 nM for 120 s deposition time and we believe even lower detection limits could be achieved by increasing the deposition time.

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