Acta Chimica Slovaca (ACS) publishes papers on fundamental and applied aspects of chemistry, biochemistry, chemical technology, chemical engineering and process control, biotechnology and food technology. Welcome are also topics which include chemical aspects of materials, physical chemistry and chemical physics, analytical chemistry, macromolecular chemistry and biomedical engineering.

Heavy metals determination using various in situ bismuth film modified carbon-based electrodes

Jozef Sochr *, Martina Machková, Ľubomír Machyňák, František Čacho, Ľubomír Švorc

Institute of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Radlinského 9, 812 37 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

E-mail: * jozef.sochr@stuba.sk

Abstract: The proposed work deals with the utilization of three carbon-based electrode substrates such as boron-doped diamond, glassy carbon and carbon paste for the preparation of in situ bismuth film modified electrodes. Such modified electrodes were subsequently used for the differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetric determination of heavy metal cations (Zn2+, Cd2+ and Pb2+) individually and simultaneously using similar experimental conditions (0.1 mol l–1 acetic buffer solution of pH 4.5 as supporting electrolyte with the addition of 0.1 mmol l–1 Bi3+, deposition potential of –1.4 V and deposition time of 120 s). The results showed that the modification step mostly enhanced the deposition and stripping process of studied cations when compared to the bare electrode substrates. A boron-doped diamond electrode was selected as the substrate for modification and the procedure was applied to the real sample analysis including water sample (certified reference material) and wastewater sample. Using the standard addition method the concentrations of particular heavy metals were quantified and the determined values were in a good agreement with those obtained by the reference method — high resolution atomic absorption spectroscopy with electrothermal atomisation and continual radiation source. This fact highlights that the developed in situ bismuth film modified boron-doped diamond electrode is a suitable electrochemical sensor that be applied to routine analysis of water samples containing heavy metals.

Keywords: in situ bismuth film modified electrode, heavy metals determination, boron-doped diamond, limit of detection, anodic stripping voltammetry, water sample

Full paper in Portable Document Format: acs_0237.pdf

Acta Chimica Slovaca, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2016, pp. 28—35, DOI: 10.1515/acs-2016-0006