Voltammetric determination of pethidine in biofluids at a carbon cloth electrode modified by carbon selenide nanofilm

Abstract

Developing a sensitive portable sensor for the screening of illicit drugs is always challenging. Due to the importance of pethidine (PTD) tracking in addiction diagnosis, many demands have recently increased for a selective and real-time sensor. Herein, a simple electrochemical sensor has been developed based on conductive carbon cloth (CC) modified with carbon selenide nanofilms (CSe2NF) to provide a CSe2NF/CC electrode as a novel PTD sensing tool. Profiting from the ingenious design of doping strategy during the synthesis process, Se was doped in the carbonaceous skeleton of the CC. Thus, the active surface area of the CSe2NF (4.61 cm2) increased respect to the unmodified CC (0.094 cm2) to embed a suitable sensing interface in the fast PTD assay. By optimizing some effective experimental parameters such as pH, supporting electrolyte, Se powder amount, scan rate and accumulation time, the sensor catalyzed efficiently the oxidation reaction of PTD at 0.97 V. Based on peak current variations, the PTD was measured over a broad concentration range from 29 nM up to 181.8 μM with a limit of detection (LOD) as low as 19.3 nM compared to the other reported PTD sensors. The developed flexible sensor recognized the spiked PTD concentrations in some biofluids, including human blood, urine and saliva. The results of PTD analysis in the non-spiked and spiked blood, urine and saliva samples as the real samples by the developed sensor were validated by HPLC analysis as the reference method using t-test statistical method at confidence level of 5%. This sensing strategy based on the binder‐free electrode could be promising for designing some sizable wearable sensors at a low cost. The high sensitivity of the sensor, which is a bonus for the rapid and on-site measurement of PTD, may open up a route for noninvasive routine analysis in clinical samples.