Miniaturized voltammetric stripping on screen printed gold electrodes for field determination of copper in atmospheric deposition

The applicability of commercial screen-printed gold electrodes (SPGEs) connected to a portable potentiostat and a laptop has been explored to optimize a new square wave anodic stripping voltammetric method for on-site determination of soluble Cu(II) in atmospheric deposition samples taken around an industrial complex. Electrode conditioning procedures, chemical and instrumental variables have been optimized to develop a reliable method capable of measuring dissolved copper with a detection limit of 3.7 ng mL−1, useful for pollution monitoring or screening purposes. The proposed method was tested with the SLRS-5 River Water for Trace Metals (recoveries 109.9–113.1%) and the SPS-SW2 Batch 121 Elements in Surface Waters (recoveries 93.2–97.6%). The method was applied to soluble Cu(II) measurement in liquid samples taken by a total atmospheric deposition collector modified with a quartz filter for soluble and insoluble elemental speciation. The voltammetric measurements on field samples were tested in the lab by a reference ICP-MS method, with good agreement. The proposed method proved capability for field operation during a two weeks monitoring campaign.