Screen-Printed Gold Electrodes as Passive Samplers and Voltammetric Platforms for the Determination of Gaseous Elemental Mercury.

Abstract

We present a methodology for the determination of gaseous elemental mercury (GEM). It is based on passive sampling of Hg on screen-printed gold electrodes (SPGEs), followed by the measurement of amalgamated mercury by square wave anodic stripping voltammetry. We have explored in detail the behavior of the SPGE electrode surface during the sampling process (by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry), the stability of the voltammetric signals, and the inter-electrode reproducibility, and obtained acceptable results. Adsorption of mercury onto the SPGE follows a nearly linear behavior until the sorbent becomes saturated (equilibrium phase) for different mercury concentrations, allowing to select a sampling time of 30 min for calibration. The theoretical behavior of the sampling system was modeled, considering the changes in the diffusive path length between the porous diffusive barrier and the adsorbed surface, L. Finally, we have tested two GEM calibration protocols. The first one is based on the measurement of the mercury stripping peak area, AHg, and the second one is based on the measurement of the mass of mercury, mHg, by standard additions. We found good correlation coefficients between the GEM concentration for both AHg (R2 = 0.9591) and mHg (R2 = 9615) in the range of 5.82 to 59.29 ng dm–3 GEM. Detection limits were 5.32 and 5.22 ng dm–3 for AHg and mHg, respectively. Our results open a new line of electroanalytical strategies for the determination of GEM in atmospheric samples.