Carbon paste electrode modified with silver thimerosal for the potentiometric flow injection analysis of silver(I)

Abstract

The utility of carbon paste electrode modified with silver ethylmercurythiosalicylate (silver thimerosal) in both static mode and flow injection analysis (FIA) is demonstrated. The electrode was fully characterized in terms of composition, response time, thermal stability, usable pH and ionic strength ranges. It has been shown that diisononyl phthalate (DINP) acts as more suitable solvent mediator for preparation of the electrode, which exhibits linear response range to Ag(I) extending from 5.0 × 10-7 to 1.0 × 10-3 M with detection limit of 2.5 × 10-7 M and Nernstian slope of 59.3 ± 1.0 mV/decade. The proposed chemically modified carbon paste electrode shows a very good selectivity for Ag(I) over a wide variety of metal ions and successfully used for the determination of the silver content of silver sulphadiazine (burning cream) and developed radiological films. The electrode was also used as an indicator electrode in the potentiometric titration of thiopental and thimerosal with AgNO3. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.