Abstract:
This work illustrates the application of boron-doped diamond (BDD) thin film
in ion chromatography. Oxidation of inorganic anions; i.e. (iodide, nitrite, thiosulfate
and thiocyanate) was investigated at boron-doped diamond electrodes using cyclic
voltammetry. Most of these anions provided well-defined cyclic voltammogram for
BDD. The background current at BDD was lower than the usual glassy carbon
electrode.
The BDD was employed as a sensing electrode for amperometric detection of
a commercial liquid chromatograph. The separation mode was ion chromatography.
The detection potential was made at 1.2 V (vs Ag/AgCl). The separation utilized a
polymer-based strong anion-exchange resin (IonPac AG16, 4 x 50 mm i.d. and IonPac
AS16, 4 x 250 mm i.d.). Results showed that pH 12 gave a reasonable separation.
Detection of the anions at the BDD electrode is best at pH 3. Therefore, there is a
mismatch between the pH of the separation and the detection. To solve this, a stream
of hydrochloric acid (2 M HCl) was pumped to merge with the stream of mobile
phase (pH 12) at the end of the separation column. In this condition, the pH at the
BDD detection cell is as low as pH 3.
The proposed IC-BDD method gave a linear calibration for these inorganic
anions in the range of 1-20 mgL-1. The method is reproducible with minimal withinday
and between-day variation. The method was successfully applied to determine
iodide in nuclear emergency tablets, thiosulfate in anti-infective drug and nitrite in
shrimp farm water. The limit of detection were 0.28, 0.20, 0.95 and 0.57 mgL-1 for
iodide, nitrite, thiosulfate and thiocyanate, respectively.