Electrochemical methods for simultaneous determination of trace amounts of dopamine and uric acid using a carbon paste electrode incorporated with multi-wall carbon nanotubes and modified with α-cyclodextrine

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the electrochemical activity of dopamine (DA) and uric acid (UA) using both a bare and a modified carbon paste electrode as the working electrode, with a platinum wire as the counter electrode and a silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl) as the reference electrode. The modified carbon paste electrode consists of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (>95%) treated with α-cyclodextrine, resulting in an electrode that exhibits a significant catalytic effect toward the electro-chemical oxidation of DA in a 0.2-M Britton–Robinson buffer solution (pH 5.0). The peak current increases linearly with the DA concentration within the molar concentration ranges of 2.0 × 10⁻⁶ to 5.0 × 10⁻⁵ M and 5.0 × 10⁻⁵ to 1.9 × 10⁻⁴ M. The detection limit (signal to noise >3) for DA was found to be 1.34 × 10⁻⁷ M, respectively. In this work, voltammetric methods such as cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry, chronocuolometry, differential pulse and square wave voltammetry, and linear sweep and hydrodynamic voltammetry were used. Cyclic voltammetry was used to investigate the redox properties of the modified electrode at various scan rates. The diffusion coefficient (D, cm² s⁻¹ = 3.05 × 10⁻⁵) and the kinetic parameters such as the electron transfer coefficient (α = 0.51) and the rate constant (k, cm³ mol⁻¹ s⁻¹ = 1.8 × 10³) for DA were determined using electrochemical approaches. By using differential pulse voltammetry for simultaneous measurements, we obtained two peaks for DA and UA in the same solution, with the peak separation approximately 136 mV. The average recovery was measured at 102.45% for DA injection.