Voltammetric determination of epinephrine using modified carbon paste electrode

Epinephrine (EP), is a very important catecholamine neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. It exists as an organic cation in the nervous tissue and biological body fluid. Many diseases are ascribed to changes of its concentration [1]. EP has, therefore, been attracted tremendous consideration in biomedically-oriented research. Hence, it is very necessary to develop sensitive, selective, and reliable methods for the direct determination of trace EP due to its physiological function and the diagnosis of some diseases in clinical medicine. Therefore, it is very important to develop sensitive and selective analytical methods for the detection of EP in biological fluids [2]. EP is an electroactive compound that can be determined by different techniques. In recent years, the development of voltammetry methods for its determination in human body fluids such as urine and serum has received considerable interest. Carbon‐based electrodes are among the most commonly used electrodes in voltammetric analysis because of their low cost, wide potential windows, low electrical resistances, and versatility of chemical modification [3]. In the present work, we describe the preparation of a new carbon paste electrode modified with ionic liquid and magnetic core-shell manganese ferrite nanoparticles (MCSILCPE) and investigate its performance for the determination of epinephrine. The morphology of the modified electrode was studied using SEM. The electrochemical characterization of the modified electrodes was carried out by cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronoamperometry (CHA) and square wave voltammetry (SWV). SWV exhibits a linear response from 1.0×10-7 to 1.0×10−4 M epinephrine. The limit of detection was obtained 2.4×10-8 M. The modified electrode exhibited excellent accuracy and precision, the relative 13th Annual Electrochemistry Seminar of Iran Materials and Energy Research Center (MERC), 22- 23 Nov, 2017 102 standard deviation was less than 4%. Finally, the modified electrode was successfully used to accurately detect the content of EP in in real samples.