Sensitive Electrochemical Determination of Catechol with a Graphene Modified Carbon Ionic Liquid Electrode

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper a graphene (GR) modified carbon ionic liquid electrode (CILE) was fabricated and used as the voltammetric sensor for the sensitive detection of catechol. Due to the specific physicochemical characteristics of GR such as high surface area, excellent conductivity and good electrochemical properties, the modified electrode exhibits rapid response and strong catalytic activity with high stability toward the electrochemical oxidation of catechol. A pair of well‐defined redox peaks appeared with the anodic and the cathodic peak potential located at 225 mV and 133 mV (vs.SCE) in pH 6.5 phosphate buffer solution, respectively. Electrochemical behaviors of catechol on the GR modified CILE were carefully investigated and the electrochemical parameters were calculated with the results of the electrode reaction standard rate constant (ks) as 1.24 s−1, the charge transfer coefficient (α) as 0.4 and the electron transfer number (n) as 2. Under the selected conditions the differential pulse voltammetric peak current increased linearly with the catechol concentrations in the range from 1.0 × 10‐7 to 7.0 × 10−4mol L‐1 with the detection limit as 3.0 × 10−8mol L‐1 (3σ). The proposed method was further applied to the synthetic waste water samples determination with satisfactory results