A flexible and disposable electrochemical sensor for the evaluation of arsenic levels: A new and efficient method for the batch fabrication of chemically modified electrodes

Abstract

In this study, a novel flexible and disposable electrochemical sensor was fabricated through the straightforward laser-induced synthesis of catalytic Au nanoparticles (AuNPs)@LIG composite for the square wave stripping voltammetry (SWASV) determination of arsenic in soil. In this process, polyimide and a metal precursor (PI-MP) were transformed to three-dimensional porous LIG and AuNPs through the graphitization, photoreduction and thermal reduction of laser ablation. To our knowledge, this is the first time that laser-induced PI-MP was employed to fabricate chemically modified electrodes on a large scale for arsenic determination. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometer (EDX), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and N₂ adsorption isotherm were used to characterize the morphological and physical properties of the materials, which demonstrated the successful synthesis of AuNPs@LIG nanocomposite. Additionally, the mechanism of AuNPs@LIG synthesis by laser induction was also investigated, and the deposition potential and the deposition time for the SWASV determination of arsenic were also optimized. The electrochemical sensor fabricated using the proposed method shows satisfactory sensitivity, stability and reliability and exhibits a good linear relationship over concentrations ranging from 0 to 40 μg/L, with a low determination limit of 0.18 μg/L. Furthermore, the obtained AuNPs@LIG surface exhibited good conductivity with a charge transfer resistance (Rct) of 73.85 Ω and a large real surface area of 807.28 mm². Finally, several real soil samples were analyzed using the prepared sensor with a satisfactory result, which verified the feasibility of this sensor. The results show that the method for chemically modified electrode fabrication proposed in this paper has good commercial potential for the batch manufacturing of electrochemical sensors.

Keywords: Arsenic determination; Electrochemical sensor; Gold nanoparticles; Laser induction; Square wave stripping voltammetry.