The electrochemical behavior of AC and CAF was study at modified electrode ZA/GCE and ZA-AcB/GCE. Because AC’s electrochemical oxidation is known to very often parallel some catalyzed oxidation in the organism[30], thus it was very important to study its oxidation which strongly depends on the solution’s pH [30].
3.1. Electrochemical behaviour of acetaminophen at ZA-AcB/GCE
The electrochemical oxidation of AC was study in various pHs (3.0, 7.0 and 11.8) utilizing cyclic voltammetry. Figure 3 shows the cyclic voltammograms recorded at bare GCE (curve a), ZA/GCE (curve b) and ZA-AcB/GCE (curve c) in various pH’s solution containing AC. One can observe that when the potential is scanned in the positive direction, the CVs recorded at modified and unmodified electrodes exhibited one main well defined oxidation peak with potential peak shifting as expected to positive potential when decreasing the solution’s pH. This observation indicates the participation of protons(s) in AC oxidation to N-acetyl-p-benzoquinone-imine (NAPQI) (see scheme 1). Interestingly, in the reverse scan potential in acidic solution (pH 3.0) two reduction peak C1 and C2 were observed on CVs a), b) and c); C1 ill-defined corresponding to the reactivity of the electrochemical generated NAPQI[30] and C2 to the reduction of P-benzoquinone, P-benzoquinone being the product of successive chemical reactions in acidic condition of NAPQI (scheme 1A). The dome (A2) observed in this CV (a) at ca + 0.23 V in the positive potential scan may be the oxidation of the product of the p-benzoquinone electrochemical reduction. Moreover, it is worth noting that the current peaks corresponding to the oxidation of AC (A1) and to the reduction of p-benzoquinone (C2) recorded at ZA/GCE are greater than those recorded at bare GCE. This can be explained by the fact that in acidic media, AC (pKa 9.5) as well as NAPQI are positively charged, thus there will be a favorable electrostatic interaction between these products facilitating its detection at GCE. Indeed, since AC is essentially size excluded from zeolite A aperture (4Å) [31], its cationic form is therefore more likely trapped on the external surface of the zeolite, thus improving its electrochemical reaction at zeolite-electrode-solution interface. This suggest an extrazeolitic mechanism of AC at ZA/GCE via ion exchange properties. Interestingly at ZA-AcB/GCE (Fig. 3A-c), the anodic peak current recorded is 1.5 time greater than that obtained at ZA-GCE. Thus, compared to GCE and ZA/GCE, there is a gain in potentials and current intensities at ZA-AcB/GCE, highlighting the good electrocatalytic activity of the composite modified electrode owing to the synergic effect of the nanoscale zeolite and high electron conductive carbon black.
In phosphate buffer (pH 7.0), the CVs recorded at modified and unmodified GCE show one well defined oxidation peak when potential was scanned at either 10mVs− 1 (Fig. 3B) or 100 mVs− 1 (dashed plots inset Fig. 3B) in positively direction and one cathodic peak in the reversed potential scan. This quasi-reversible process corresponds to two electron electrochemical redox reaction of AC to NAQPI[30]. In addition, for all the three voltammograms of Fig. 3B, the current ratio IpC1/IpA1 was found to be 0.15 at GCE, 0.44 at ZA/GCE and 0.65 at ZA-AcB/GCE, suggesting that part of NAPQI is likely involved in the chemical reaction leading to the formation of dimer (see scheme 1B). Interestingly one can note that the CV recorded at ZA-AcB/GCE at for example 10 mVs− 1 exhibited the separation peak to peak potential ∆E was about 0.26 V about half that of those obtained at CV (a) and (b). Moreover, both the cathodic and anodic peak currents at CV (c) significantly increased compared with those recorded at ZA/GCE and bare GCE. All these results indicate that although the reaction mechanism of AC is the same at modified and unmodified electrodes, the presence of carbon black within the composite onto the electrode surface has favored the oxidation of AC to NAQPI and vice-versa, thus highlighting electrocatalytic of composite modified electrode toward the AC in this media.
Figure 3C and D presents, respectively the CVs recorded in alkaline media (pH 11.8) containing AC at modified and unmodified electrodes at 100 mVs− 1 and at 10 mVs− 1. One can observed that the CVs recorded at unmodified GCE (curve a)) by scanning the potential at 100 mV s− 1 exhibits mainly a well-defined anodic peak A1 at + 0.30 V attributed to the oxidation of AC (1) to NAPQI (2) and two cathodic peak C1 and C2 at + 0.13 V and − 0.15 V respectively. The ill-defined peak C1 corresponds to the reduction of NAPQI (2) to AC[30] and C2 to the reduction of O-benzoquinone (3) to N-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl) acetamide (3-hydroxyacetaminophen) (4) [30]which oxidation (A2) is observed as a hump at − 0.04 V. At modified GCEs, the recorded CVs (curves b and c) are quite similar and exhibit an oxidation peak A1 and a reduction peak C1 as observed on CV (a) recorded at bare GCE and one reduction peak located respectively, at -0.19 V at ZA/GCE and at -0.13 V at ZA-AcB/GCE. These reduction peaks may be composite of C1 and C2 observed on CV (a). Interestingly, when the potential was scanned at low scan rate (< 50 mV.s− 1) with ZA-AcB/GCE and ZA/GCE, the reduction peak splitted in two reduction peaks namely C2 and C3 appearing, respectively at − 0.15 V and − 0.26 V (CV b) and c) in Fig. 3D), the oxidation peak being unchanged in term of potential. The peak C3 at − 0.26 V was likely attributed to the reduction of P-benzoquinone (6) to N-(2,4,5- trihydroxyphenyl)acetamide (5) (reaction III), N-(2,4,5- trihydroxyphenyl)acetamide being obtained from (4) via the Micheal addition of hydroxide ion [30]. Thus, by lowering the potential scan rate, the product of reaction III may quantitatively present at the electrode interface and then led to the appearance of peak C3 (see Fig S3) corresponding to the reduction of compound (6) to compound (5). In addition, in the second potential scan (solid lines), a new anodic peak A3 appears at − 0.15 V, corresponding to the oxidation of (5). At bare GCE, the decrease in potential scan rate did not lead to any change in CV shape (CVs a) in Fig. 3D). This behavior is a clear evidence of the good electrocatalytic properties of the composite modified electrode toward the electrochemical analysis of AC.
From the above study it appeared that in acid, neutral and alkaline media, the oxidation of AC to NAPQI was well defined with peak potential dependent of solution pHs.
In order to avoid the effects related to the concentration of the analyte and to preserve the authenticity of the reactions taking place, the electroanalysis of AC was carried out in buffer medium. Robinson buffer solution (RB) offers a large range of pH ranging from 2 to 12, thus it was used to perform the next steps of this work. Prior to this, CVs recorded at ZA-AcB/GCE in RB containing AC were compared with those recorded in electrolyte solution pH 3 (Fig. SA), (Fig. S4B) and 11.8 (Fig. S4C) containing the same amount of AC. It is clearly observed that all the recorded CV at ZA-AcB/GCE exhibited the same shape with peak current as well as peak potential quite the same, indicating that the electrochemical signature of AC at quite identical in both media. From all these findings, it appears that the electroanalysis of AC at modified electrodes can be monitored by studying the main oxidation peak due to the electrochemical transformation of AC to NAQPI.
3.2. Electrochemical behaviour of AC in presence of CAF at ZA-AcB/GCE
As reported in the literature, the electrochemical behaviour of CAF is well highlighted in acidic media [32], thus the electrochemical behaviour of AC in the presence of CAF was studied in RB pH 3.0. Figure 4 shows CVs recorded in 0.04 M RB (pH 3.0) containing a mixture AC (98 µM) and CAF (202.8 µM) at bare GCE (curve a), ZA/GCE (curve b) and ZA-AcB/GCE (curve c). It can be observed at modified and unmodified electrodes, the forward potential scan in the positive direction led to two oxidation peaks: the first at less positive potential corresponding to the oxidation of acetaminophen and the second at more positive potential to the oxidation of caffeine. On the reverse scan, one low and ill-defined reduction peak was observed on CVs recorded at bare GCE and ZA/GCE ( ~ + 0.46 V) which corresponds to the reduction of NAPQI to AC as reported in section 3.1. Interestingly, at ZA-AcB/GCE, the recorded CV(curve c) displays a well-defined quasi-reversible process with redox peak centered at + 0.49 V with ΔE = 0.60 V (current ratio Ipc (3.5 µA)/Ipa (5.25 µA) equal to 0.7) while CAF undergoes an irreversible oxidation peak current at + 1.35 V. Furthermore, the oxidation peak potential of AC and CAF obtained on composite modified electrode are negatively shifted respectively for 38 mV and 32 mV of those recorded at bare GCE; and 53 mV and 40 mV of those recorded at ZA/GCE. Furthermore, the oxidation peaks current of AC and CAF recorded at ZA-AcB/GCE were respectively about 3.5 and 2 times greater than those obtained with bare GCE, 5 and 2.8 time greater than those recorded with ZA/GCE. Thus, the increase in peak current associated with the lowering potential demonstrated that the combination of nanozeolite with carbon black as an electrode modifier has an electrocatalytic activity towards the oxidation of both AC and CAF. This result is likely due on one hand to the favourable electrostatic interaction between cationic form of analytes and the negative charged of the nanoscale zeolite particles and on the second hand to the good electron conductor of AcB.
3.3. Effect of scan rate
The relationship between the scan rate and voltammetric response gives informations about the nature of the electrochemical process occurring at nanocomposite modified electrode. Figure 5A and 5B shows the CVs recorded at different scan rates in RB pH 3 containing a mixture of AC and CAF, respectively. From the CVs in shown in Fig. 5, one can note that the oxidation and reduction peak current increased as the scan rate increases for the both analytes and the plots of peak current versus square root of the scan rate resulted in a straight line (R² = 0.998 for both analytes, inset Fig. 5). The obtained linearity suggests that the electrochemical process governing the charge transfer is the diffusion of analytes. Additionally, the slope of log of peak current versus log of scan rate is 0.42 for CAF (line a in Fig. 5C) and 0.38 and 0.50 for AC (lines b and c, Fig. 5C) respectively. These values are close to the theoretical value 0.50 expected for diffusion-controlled electrode process [33, 34]. This confirms that the electrochemical oxidation of these analytes was predominantly governed by an apparent diffusion process.
3.4. Effect of pH
In order to determine the optimal pH and confirm the involvement of proton in the electrochemical reaction, the effect of the buffer’s pH on the sensitivity of ZA-AcB/GCE towards both analytes was investigated in RB’s pH ranging from 2 to 9 containing the mixture of analytes (225.5 µM CAF and 99 µM AC). Figure 6A presents the CVs recorded at ZA-AcB/GCE. As can be observed the cathodic and anodic peak potential shifted positively with pH increase. As shown in Fig. 6B, the plots of Ipa versus pH indicate that the oxidation peak current is affected by electrolytic solution’s pH (Fig. 6B curve a for AC and curve b for CAF), the higher peak current being obtained at pH 3. Therefore, pH 3 was chosen for the electroanalytical experiments of the both analytes. In addition, the plots of E1/2 and Epa versus pH result in a linear regression (Fig. 6B) as presented by plot c for AC and plot d for CAF, respectively. The corresponding linear equations are as follows:
E1/2,AC = -0.053 pH + 0.68 (R²= 0.974) (Eq. 2)
Ep,CAF = -0.015 pH + 1.42 (R²= 0.970) (Eq. 3)
The value of slope of Eq. 2, 53 mV/pH obtained for AC is close to the theoretical value 59 mV/pH corresponding to the involvement of equal number of electron and proton, thus for two electrons involved in the electrochemical reaction of AC, they are accompanied by two protons (scheme 1A). For CAF, the slope of Eq. 3 is 15 mV/pH as reported elsewhere[35–37], suggesting there is not an equal number of proton and electrons involved in the oxidation of CAF in opposition to CAF’s electrochemical reaction exhibited in scheme 1B. Even if the reason of the behaviour is not yet well known, it appeared that the electrooxidation of CAF at ZA-AcB/GCE is more complex.
3.5 Effect the amount of acetylene carbon black and the film thickness.
The influence of the amount of AcB within the film composite onto GCE on the sensitivity of the composite modified GCE towards AC and CAF was investigated using DPV by varying the amount of AcB from 0 to 30 wt% used in the preparation of the composite. From this graph, on can observed that the electrochemical response of the oxidation of AC and CAF varied when different ZA-AcB/GCE prepared using composite with different AcB content were used to record the response in the same solution ( RB pH3 containing fix concentration of AC and CAF). The results are presented in Figure S5-A (curve a for AC and curve b for CAF). They show that the oxidation peak current of the both compounds increased with AcB content in the composite film GCE and the maximum current was obtained when the composite film was made with a composite containing 10% of AcB then levelled off. This can be explained by the fact that the high content of AcB may lead to less stable film due to its hydrophobicity. Thus, the film was further prepared using composite made of 10% of AcB.
The effect of suspension’s volume allowed to dry on the sensitivity of the composite film electrode was investigated in the range of 1.5µL-7.5µL of the 10% AcB /ZA suspension. Figure S5-B depicts the effect of anodic peaks current (for AC (curve a) and CAF (curve b)) versus volume of the suspension’s volume. As can be seen, the oxidation current peak of the both analytes increased with the volume of the suspension of ZA/AcB and reached the maximum for 5µL of the suspension and then decreased for higher volume. The slight decrease of the electrochemical response could be the result of the larger film thickness which becomes not only unstable but also resistant to the diffusion of analytes onto the surface of the electrodes.
3.6. Individual and simultaneous determination of AC and CAF
Figure 7A shows the DPVs recorded at ZA-AcB/GCE in RB pH 3 in which successive addition of either AC or CAF were added. One can observe that the electrochemical oxidation current in each case increased when the concentration of the analyte was increased. It was observed that the oxidation peak current was linearly dependent on the concentration of AC ranging from 0.5 to 89 µM (see inset Fig. 7A) and from 5 to 99 µM (see inset Fig. 7B) for the CAF with regression equations:
Ip = 0.052 [AC] + 0.010 (R² = 0.994) (Eq. 4)
Ip = 0.040 [CAF] − 0.236 (R² = 0.999) (Eq. 5)
Interestingly when successive additions of AC were made into the electrolyte containing fix concentration of CAF (89 µM), the oxidative peak current of AC increased synchronously while the CAF’s oxidation current remained constant (see Fig. 7C). Similar behaviour was observed when increasing concentration of CAF was added to the electrolytic solution containing fix concentration of AC (87.6 µM) (see Fig. 7D). These increases are linearly depended on the concentration of each added analyte with regression equations:
Ip = 0.057 [AC] – 0.846 (R²= 0.994) (Eq. 6)
Ip = 0.443 [CAF] – 0.330 (R²= 0.997) (Eq. 7)
It is worth noted that the sensitivities of ZA-AcB/GCE obtained for individual addition of each analyte and for addition of one analyte in presence of each other was found to be quite close. These results demonstrate that the prepared sensors are a promising candidate for individual and simultaneous detection of AC and CAF without any interference. The detection limit based on S/N = 3 was estimated to be 0.38 µM and 0.82 µM for AC and CAF respectively.
Further, the simultaneous addition of AC and CAF in RB pH 3 has led to two well resolved independent oxidation peak at + 0.51 V for the electro oxidation of AC and + 1.36 V electro-oxidation for CAF as shown in Fig. 7E. The peak current increased with continuous addition of the both analytes and the peak current were linearly depended on the concentration of each analyte from 11 to 80 µM for AC (R²= 0.997) and 20 to 134 µM for CAF (R²= 0.994) with sensitivity of 0.056 µA/µM and 0.051 µA/µM for AC and CAF, respectively. Thus, the oxidation peak potentials of the obtained DPVs as well as their sensitivities match well with those obtained with individual analyte.
The comparison of the performances of ZA-AcB/GCE and other electrodes reported for determination of acetaminophen and caffeine described in the literature are listed in Table 1. It is clearly noted that the developed sensors have appreciable linear range with a detection limit of the same order of magnitude and even lower than some of previously reported works.
Table 1
The comparison of the analytical performances of ZA-AcB/GCE for caffeine and paracetamol determination with previously reported electrodes.
Electrodes
|
Method
|
Analytes
|
Linear range (µM)
|
Detection limit (µM)
|
References
|
Nafion®HNT/GCE 1
|
DPV
|
AC
|
0.6–14
|
0.011
|
[33]
|
CAF
|
0.6–20
|
0.173
|
poly(AHNSA)/GCE 2
|
SWV
|
AC
|
10–125
|
0.45
|
[38]
|
CAF
|
10–125
|
0.79
|
aGCE 3
|
SWV
|
AC
|
10–180
|
2.55
|
[39]
|
CAF
|
10–95
|
2.36
|
Lt/fMWCNT/MGCE 4
|
DPV
|
AC
|
0.9–80
|
0.78
|
[2]
|
CAF
|
10–110
|
3.54
|
CS-Fe3O4NP/GCE 5
|
DPV
|
AC
|
50-2000
|
16
|
[40]
|
CAF
|
50–900
|
23
|
GC-SnS/TiO2-GO 6
|
DPV
|
AC
|
0.009-280
|
7.5
|
[41]
|
CAF
|
0.0166-333
|
4.4
|
MOF-199/Naf-GCE 7
|
DPV
|
AC
|
0.1–5
|
1.3
|
[36]
|
CAF
|
0.2–5
|
1.2
|
PT/TiO2-Gr/GCE 8
|
DPV
|
AC
|
0.1–90
|
0.034
|
[42]
|
CAF
|
0.25–200
|
0.5
|
ZA-AcB/GCE
|
DPV
|
AC
|
0.5–89
|
0.38
|
This work
|
CAF
|
5–99
|
0.82
|
1 Nafion halloysite nanotube modified glassy carbon electrode; 2 Poly(4-amino-3-hydroxynaphthalene sulfonic acid)-modified glassy carbon electrode; 3 activated glassy carbon electrode; 4 Luteolin on functionalized multi-wall carbon nanotube modified glassy carbone electrode ; 5 cassava starch-Fe3O4 nanoparticles modified glassy carbone electrode; 6 Tin sulphite (SnS) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) on grapheme oxide (GO) sheets modified glassy carbon electrode; 7metal organic framework-199/nafion modified glassy carbon electrode; 8 Poly(taurine)/TiO2 graphene composite modified glassy carbon electrode |
3.7. Reproducibility, stability and Interferences study of ZA-AcB/GCE
The reproducibility of ZA-AcB/GCE was evaluated by carrying out repetitive measurement-regeneration cycles. The results of the respective measurements recorded in RB
(pH 3.0) containing 240 µM of CAF and 85 µM of AC are presented in Fig. 8. The DPVs obtained display a relative standard deviation of 6.5% and 4.6% for AC and CAF respectively. This suggests that the prepared sensor exhibited a good reproducibility performance toward the simultaneous detection of these compounds. The results obtained in Fig. 7 above confirm the good operational stability of the composite modified glassy carbon electrode. The developed sensors have proven 95% of repeatability after one week of use.
The interference effects of potentially interfering substances on the DPV response of AC and CAF at ZA-AcB/GCE were evaluated. Figure S6 shows DPVs of AC and CAF simultaneously introduces gradually from 2–22 µM and 20–220 µM respectively, in RB (pH 3) containing 280 µM of ascorbic acid (AA), glucose (Glu) and tyrosine (Tyr). It is clearly observed that current peak due to the oxidation of AC and CAF increased as their concentration increased. This result shows that none of the foreign molecules significantly interfered with AC and CAF (signals change below 5%) except UA (> 50 µM) was found to interfere with AC. This confirms the good selectivity of ZA-AcB/GCE in complex solution toward simultaneous detection of AC and CAF.
3.8. Simultaneous quantification of AC and CAF in pharmaceuticals formulations
The developed sensors were also applied for the quantification of AC and CAF in tablets containing the both analytes using standard addition method. Each analyte was analysed by introducing a known amount of tablet sample analytes in voltametric cell and the corresponding DPVs recorded. This was followed by 3 successive simultaneous additions of AC and CAF standard solution and the resulting DPVs (added real sample: dashed line and standard solution: solid line) are presented in figure S7-A, S7-B and S7-C for Panadol, Ibex and Dolimex tablet’s brand, respectively. It is clearly observed from these CVs that simultaneous addition of AC and CAF standard solution led to an increase of current peak. From the slopes of the regression lines (shown in inset Fig. S7) obtained by plotting current intensities versus the added amount of AC and CAF versus the electrochemical oxidation’s response, the amounts of both analyte in tablets were determined and their subsequent recovery percentage were estimated to range between 94–101% and 93–100% for AC and CAF respectively (see Table 2). These results demonstrate that the potential applicability of ZA-AcB/GCE for the determination of AC and CAF in drug samples without any interference, which is not the case when using UV spectrophotometer because AC and CAF were found to interfere (see Fig. S8).
Table 2
Determination of AC and CAF quantities in tablets using the ZA-AcB/GCE
Tablets brand
|
Added (µM)
|
Founded (µM)a
|
% recovery ± %RSD
|
AC
|
CAF
|
AC
|
CAF
|
AC
|
CAF
|
PANADOL
|
70
|
7.2
|
68.84
|
6.78
|
97.91 ± 1.03
|
93.88 ± 5.62
|
IBEX
|
244
|
17.2
|
245.85
|
16.60
|
100.76 ± 1.52
|
96.55 ± 1.25
|
DOLIMEX
|
512
|
27
|
483.27
|
26.82
|
94.31 ± 2.52
|
99.36 ± 1.95
|
a average of three replicate measurements |