Covalent modification of glassy carbon electrode with glutamic acid for simultaneous determination of uric acid and ascorbic acid

Abstract

A novel covalently modified glassy carbon electrode with glutamic acid has been fabricated via an electrochemical oxidation procedure and was applied to the catalytic oxidation of uric acid (UA) and ascorbic acid (AA), reducing the overpotentials by about 0.2 V and 0.3 V, respectively. Based on its strong catalytic function toward the oxidation of UA and AA, the modified electrode resolved the overlapping voltammetric response of UA and AA into two well-defined voltammetric peaks with both cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), which can be used for the simultaneous determination of these species in a mixture. The catalytic peak current obtained from DPV was linearly dependent on the UA and AA concentration in the range 2 × 10⁻⁶–4 × 10⁻⁴ mol L⁻¹ and 1.0 × 10⁻⁶–4 × 10⁻⁴ mol L⁻¹ with correlation coefficients of 0.996 and 0.997, respectively. The detection limits (3δ) for UA and AA were 1.1 × 10⁻⁶ mol L⁻¹ and 9.2 × 10⁻⁷ mol L⁻¹, respectively. The modified electrode shows good sensitivity, selectivity and stability, and has been applied to the determination of UA and AA simultaneously in human urine samples with satisfactory results.