Amperometric determination of sugars at activated barrel plating nickel electrodes

Abstract

We report amperometric determination of sugars by using a disposable barrel plating nickel electrode (Ni-BPE) in this study. The activated Ni-BPE possesses good reproducibility in flow injection analysis of sugars with a relative standard deviation of 3.16% for 10 consecutive injections of glucose. The electrocatalytic mechanism for the detection of sugars as well as the use as a detector in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is investigated. We achieve a good separation of four sugars (glucose, fructose, sucrose, and maltose) in HPLC with favorable sensitivity at a detection potential of +0.55 V vs. Ag/AgCl. The results of wide linear calibration ranges and detection limits in the μM range meet the need of real sample analysis. This detection method is successfully used for quantitative determination of sugars in honey to identify its authentication. © 2008 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH&Co. KGaA.