Synthesis and characterization of ordered mesoporous carbon as electrocatalyst for simultaneous determination of epinephrine and acetaminophen

Abstract

In this research, we report an easy method for synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) with hexagonal arrays of tubes (CMK-5). The synthesized OMC was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and nitrogen sorption isotherms techniques. Due to the large surface area and high conductivity of OMC, OMC-modified glassy carbon (OMCs/GC) electrode was prepared. The unique electrochemical activity of OMCs/GC electrode was illustrated using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electron impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in which OMC showed a faster electron transfer rate, as compared with glassy carbon electrode. The electrochemical behavior of epinephrine (EN) and acetaminophen (AP) at OMC/GC electrode was also investigated using cyclic voltammetry. The OMC/GC electrode exhibited high electrocatalytic activities toward oxidation of EN and AP and displayed good voltammetric peak separation between them. In differential pulse voltammetry technique, both EN and AP give sensitive oxidation peaks at 120 mV and 320 mV, respectively. Therefore, investigated method was applied for simultaneous determination of EN and AP. AP and EN give linear response over the range of 0.2–15 μM and 4–100 μM, respectively. The lower detection limits were found to be 0.07 μM for AP and 0.94 μM for EN.