Electrochemical oxidation determination and voltammetric behaviour of 4-nitrophenol based on Cu₂O nanoparticles modified glassy carbon electrode

Cu2O nanoparticles (nano-Cu2O) modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) was fabricated and used to investigate the electrochemical behaviour of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) by cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronoamperometry (CA), chronocoulometry (CC) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). Compared with GCE, a remarkable increase in oxidation peak current was observed. It indicates that nano-Cu2O exhibits remarkable enhancement effect on the electrochemical oxidation of 4-NP. Under the optimised experimental conditions, the oxidation peak currents were propotional to 4-NP concentration in the range from 1.0 × 10−6 to 4.0 × 10−4 mol L−1 with a detection limit of 5.0 × 10−7 mol L−1 (S/N = 3). The fabricated electrode presented good repeatability, stability and anti-interference. Finally, the proposed method was applied to determine 4-NP in water samples. The recoveries for these samples were from 94.60% to 105.5%. Keywords: Cu2O nanoparticles4-Nitrophenolelectrochemical oxidationdeterminationglassy carbon electrode Acknowledgements This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 20775044) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong province, China (Y2006B20).