Enhanced Electrocatalytic Oxidation of Paracetamol at DNA Modified Gold Electrode

Abstract

Cysteine monolayer has been assembled onto bare gold electrode (SAM/Au), and subsequently deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has been successfully immobilized at the SAM/Au electrode. The thus modified electrode is assigned DNA/SAM/Au. Modification steps of the electrode were followed electrochemically using K4[Fe(CN6)] electrochemical marker. Also, the build-up of the modified electrode composition is followed using EDX and the crystallographic orientation is inspected using XRD. The electrochemical behavior of paracetamol (PC) at DNA/SAM/Au electrode is investigated. Interestingly, the sluggish irreversible behavior of PC at the bare gold electrode is converted to a quasi-reversible one at DNA/SAM/Au electrode pointing to some interaction between the immobilized DNA and PC. The enhanced electrochemical behavior of PC at modified DNA/SAM/Au electrode is successfully used for a sensitive electrochemical determination of PC. Square wave voltammetry (SWV) was used for this purpose. The concentration of PC was in linear relation with the peak current at the optimum conditions within the range 10.0–110.0 μg mL−1 with correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.998. Also, the standard deviation (SD) and relative standard deviation (RSD) were calculated and found to be 0.817 and 1.52, respectively, indicating the significance of the present method.