Highly Selective Electrochemical Detection of Copper (II) Using N,N’-bis(acetylacetone)ethylenediimine as a Receptor

The highly selective, indirect detection of copper (II) ions at a bare glassy carbon electrode, in the presence of N,N’-bis(acetylacetone)ethylenediimine, is reported here. The developed method is based on the electrochemical signal of the complex formed between the above mentioned ligand and the copper (II) ions. The nature of the formed complex was investigated by spectrophotometric and electrochemical methods. The developed electrochemical method is fast, cheap, easy to perform and it proved to be very selective for copper (II). Using, the new method a linear response was obtained for Cu (II) ions in the concentration range of 10 µM to 2 mM, with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.635 ppm. The optimized electrochemical method was successfully used for the detection of copper (II) ions from real samples. It was also demonstrated that the occurrence of the anodic oxidation peak for the complex was strongly dependent on the immobilization technique of the ligand at the surface of the electrode