Glassy Carbon Modified with Cationic Surfactant (GCE/CTAB) as Electrode Material for Fast and Simple Analysis of the Arsenic Drug Roxarsone

Abstract

For the fast and simple sensing of the arsenic drug roxarsone (ROX), the development of a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) modified with cationic surfactant (cetyltrimethylammonium bromide, CTAB) material is critical. The CTAB-modified glassy carbon electrode, in contrast to the unmodified one, showed excellent behavior for electrochemical reduction of ROX using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and square-wave adsorptive stripping voltammetry (SWAdSV) techniques. CV studies reveal an irreversible reduction process of NO2 to NH–OH in the ROX molecule in NaAc–HAc buffer (pH = 5.6). The electrode material was characterized using CV and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The experiments show that the surfactant-modified material has faster electron transfer and a higher active surface area, and permits a diffusion–adsorption-controlled process. After optimization, the SWAdSV procedure with GCE/CTAB has linear ranges of 0.001–0.02 and 0.02–20 µM, and a detection limit of 0.13 nM. Furthermore, the procedure successfully determined roxarsone in river water samples.