Rapid determination of hydrogen peroxide in whitening patches for teeth using a new portable near-infrared spectrometer

Abstract

A nondestructive determination method of hydrogen peroxide in whitening patches for teeth was developed by using a new portable near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer. Development of the portable NIR spectrometer was based on microchip technologies with photodiode arrays. By using the portable NIR spectrometer, the new determination method is very rapid; it requires less than 1 s. The conventional method for the determination of hydrogen peroxide, redox titration, requires about 2 h of analysis, including the sample extraction time from a sample matrix. The conventional method also uses hazardous and harmful solvents and, furthermore, its samples cannot be used after titration. To find the peak due to the O–H bond vibration of hydrogen peroxide under the existence of water which shows huge absorption O–H absorption around 1450 nm, the NIR spectra of a hydrogen peroxide aqueous solution were investigated. A clear variation of absorption based on the concentration of the hydrogen peroxide due to the O–H bond vibration was found in the standard deviation plot around 1400 nm. In this study, two kinds of whitening patch products, A and B, were used for samples. A partial least squares (PLS) regression was used for calibration and validation in the 1100 to 1720 nm spectral range. For validation results, the standard error of prediction (SEP) was 0.38% for Patch A and 0.37% for Patch B. This study shows the feasibility of using the portable NIR spectrometer with photodiode arrays for the rapid and safe determination of hydrogen peroxide in whitening patches.