Simultaneous electrochemical detection of uric acid and ascorbic acid at a poly( N, N-dimethylaniline) film-coated GC electrode

Abstract

A polymer film of N, N-dimethylaniline (PDMA) having a positive charge on the quarternary ammonium group in its backbone was electrochemically deposited on a glassy carbon (GC) electrode surface. The resulting film-coated GC electrode was used to detect uric acid (UA) electrochemically in the presence of ascorbic acid (AA). Both UA and AA are anionic in a solution of pH 7 and thus were attracted to the film, which lowered their oxidation potentials and increased their oxidation currents. In cyclic voltammetric measurements, the negative shift of the oxidation potential of UA (by 0.28 V) compared with that at the bare electrode was larger than that of AA (by 0.2 V). Also the increase in the oxidation current of UA at the PDMA film-coated electrode was larger than that of AA. In square wave voltammetric measurements, the PDMA film-coated electrode could separate the oxidation peak potentials of UA and AA present in the same solution by about 200 mV though the bare electrode gave a single broad response. A successful elimination of the fouling effect by the oxidized product of AA on the response of UA has been achieved at the PDMA film-coated electrode. The detection limit of UA in the presence of 160-fold excess of AA was found as 1.25 μM and the current response for UA increased linearly with increase of its concentration from 1.25 to 68.75 μM in the presence of AA with a correlation coefficient of 0.999 and a sensitivity of 0.0276 μA μM −1. In flow injection analysis, a good linear relationship between the oxidation current and the concentration from 2 to 21 μM of UA was found. The sensitivity of the PDMA film-coated electrode towards UA was calculated as 0.0285 μA μM −1 with a correlation coefficient of 0.997. The stable and reproducible response for both AA and UA at the PDMA film-coated electrode was verified by flow injection experiments. As the response of UA was reproducible in the presence of AA, it was expected that the oxidized product of AA would not affect the electrode response of UA. Moreover, the physiologically common interferents (i.e., glucose, purine, urea and citrate) negligibly affected the response of UA. The PDMA film-coated electrode exhibited a stable and sensitive response to UA in the presence of interferents.