Egg-Shell Like Hollow Alumina Sphere Modified Electrode for Enhanced Electrochemical Determination of Metronidazole

• Published in: Journal of the Electrochemical Society 2019, Vol.166 (13), p.B1151-B1160
• Main Authors: Kalaiyarasi, J., Pandian, K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0013-4651; 1945-7111
• DOI: 10.1149/2.1211912jes

An egg shell like alumina hollow sphere was prepared using hydrothermally synthesised carbon sphere as hard template. Extensive studies have been carried out to characterize the alumina hollow sphere using different experimental techniques, such as FE-SEM, XRD, TGA, BET and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The electrochemical behavior of metronidazole (MNZ) drug was investigated using Al2O3 hollow shell modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) and a well-defined irreversible reduction peak was observed at −0.70V vs. Ag/AgCl at neutral pH medium. From the peak current against pH graph it is understand that the involvement of two protons and two electrons during reduction reaction and yield the corresponding hydroxylamine. Differential pulse voltamnmetry (DPV) method was employed for the electrochemical detection of metronidazole under optimized experimental condition. A linear calibration graph was drawn by plotting the peak current against concentration of MNZ ranging from 0.3 nM to 5.3 μM with a correlation coefficient of 0.9982. The detection limit was found to be 0.036 nM at a signal to noise (S/N) ratio of 3. The proposed method can be used for the electrochemical detection of metronidazole in real samples such as tablets and urine samples with greater sensitivity.