Voltammetric determination of a fluoroquinolone antibiotic based on multilayer reduced graphene oxide sensor prepared directly, promptly by electrochemically expanding graphite electrode surface

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ciprofloxacin (Cip), a fluoroquinolone antibiotic, was determined by linear sweep adsorptive stripping voltammetric method using multilayer reduced graphene oxide electrode (m-rGO). The m-rGO electrode was fabricated directly, simply and promptly from graphite platform by potentiostatic technique without further modification. The produced electrode exhibited excellent performance for ciprofloxacin (Cip) determination with a much higher signal of Cip than that on the initial graphite electrode (13.4 times). This dominance of the m-rGO electrode resulted from the large electrochemically active surface area, electrochemical catalysis, suitable functional groups on the electrode surface. Experimental conditions such as the electrode fabrication time, the supporting solution, and accumulation time were optimised to obtain the Cip highest signal. A Cip analytical method established under the optimal conditions had a good linear relationship between the Cip signal with its concentration range from 0.5 to 20 µM (R2 = 0.9953). The method showed a low detection limit (LOD = 0.078 µM), satisfactory reproducibility (RSD = 1.50%), and high accuracy. Cip concentration in a spiked lake water sample determined by the proposed method with acceptable precision (RSD = 5.59%) and trueness (recovery = 94.2–106.3%) was comparable with LC-MS/MS method.