Electrochemical detection of selected heavy metals in water: a case study of African experiences

The safety of water resources throughout the globe has been compromised by various human activities and climate change over the last decades. Consequently, the world is currently confronted with a severe shortage of water supply and a water safety crisis, amidst a growing population. With poor environmental regulations, indiscriminate budding of urban slums, poverty, and a lack of basic knowledge of hygiene and sanitation, the African water supply has been critically threatened by different organic and inorganic contaminants, which results in several health issues. Inorganic pollutants such as heavy metals are particularly of interest because they are mostly stable and non-biodegradable. Therefore, they are not easily removed from water. In different parts of the continent, the concentration of heavy metals in drinking water far exceeds the permissible level recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Worse still, this problem is expected to increase with growing population, industrialization, urbanization, and, of course, corruption of government and local officials. Most of the African population is ignorant of the standards of safe water. In addition, the populace lack access to affordable and reliable technologies and tools that could be used in the quantification of these pollutants. This problem is not only applicable to domestic, but also to commercial, communal, and industrial water sources. Hence, a global campaign has been launched to ensure constant assessment of the presence of these metals in the environment and to promote awareness of dangers associated with unsafe exposure to them. Various conventional spectroscopic heavy metal detection techniques have been used with great success across the world. However, such techniques suffer from some obvious setbacks, such as the cost of procurement and professionalism required to operate them, which have limited their applications. This paper, therefore, reviews the condition of African water sources, health implications of exposure to heavy metals, and the approaches explored by various indigenous electrochemists, to provide a fast, affordable, sensitive, selective, and stable electrochemical sensors for the quantification of the most significant heavy metals in our water bodies.

Advances in Electrochemical Detection Electrodes for As(III)

Arsenic is extremely abundant in the Earth's crust and is one of the most common environmental pollutants in nature. In the natural water environment and surface soil, arsenic exists mainly in the form of trivalent arsenite (As(III)) and pentavalent arsenate (As(V)) ions, and its toxicity can be a serious threat to human health. In order to manage the increasingly serious arsenic pollution in the living environment and maintain a healthy and beautiful ecosystem for human beings, it is urgent to conduct research on an efficient sensing method suitable for the detection of As(III) ions. Electrochemical sensing has the advantages of simple instrumentation, high sensitivity, good selectivity, portability, and the ability to be analyzed on site. This paper reviews various electrode systems developed in recent years based on nanomaterials such as noble metals, bimetals, other metals and their compounds, carbon nano, and biomolecules, with a focus on electrodes modified with noble metal and metal compound nanomaterials, and evaluates their performance for the detection of arsenic. They have great potential for achieving the rapid detection of arsenic due to their excellent sensitivity and strong interference immunity. In addition, this paper discusses the relatively rare application of silicon and its compounds as well as novel polymers in achieving arsenic detection, which provides new ideas for investigating novel nanomaterial sensing. We hope that this review will further advance the research progress of high-performance arsenic sensors based on novel nanomaterials.

Calix[4]arene Derivative-Modified Glassy Carbon Electrode: A New Sensing Platform for Rapid, Simultaneous, and Picomolar Detection of Zn(II), Pb(II), As(III), and Hg(II)

The glassy carbon electrode was fabricated with multifunctional bis-triazole-appended calix[4]arene and then used for the simultaneous detection of Zn(II), Pb(II), As(III), and Hg(II). Before applying the square-wave anodic stripping voltammetry, the sensitivity and precision of the modified electrode was assured by optimizing various conditions such as the modifier concentration, pH of the solution, deposition potential, accumulation time, and supporting electrolytes. The modified glassy carbon electrode was found to be responsive up to picomolar limits for the aforementioned heavy metal ions, which is a concentration limit much lower than the threshold level permitted by the World Health Organization. Importantly, the designed sensing platform showed anti-interference ability, good stability, repeatability, reproducibility, and applicability for the detection of multiple metal ions. The detection limits obtained for Zn(II), Pb(II), As(III), and Hg(II) are 66.3, 14.6, 71.9, and 28.9 pM, respectively.

Electrochemical oxidation of As(iii) on Pd immobilized Pt surface: kinetics and sensing performance

Pd nanoparticles were electrochemically immobilized on a Pt surface in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) molecules to study the electrokinetics of arsenite oxidation reactions and the corresponding sensing activities. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis showed that on the Pt surface, Pd atoms exist as adatoms and the contents of Pd(0) and Pd(ii) were 75.72 and 24.28 at%, respectively, and the particle sizes were in the range of 61-145 nm. The experimental results revealed that the catalytic efficiency as well as the charge transfer resistance (at the redox potential of the Fe(ii)/Fe(iii) couple) increased in the order of Pt < Pt-Pd < Pt-Pdsds. A Pt-Pdsds electrode exhibited an open circuit potential (OCP) of 0.65 V in acidic conditions; however, when 50.0 mM NaAsO2 was present, the OCP value shifted to 0.42 V. It has been projected that the As(iii) oxidation proceeds using a sequential pathway: As(iii) → As(iv) → As(v). After optimization of the square wave voltammetric data, the limits of detection of As(iii) were obtained as 1.3 μg L-1 and 0.2 μg L-1 when the surface modification of the Pt surface was executed with Pd particles in the absence and presence of the SDS surfactant, respectively. Finally, real samples were analyzed with excellent recovery performance.

Inorganic arsenic speciation by differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry using thoria nanoparticles-carbon paste electrodes

Two novel thoria (ThO2) nanoparticles-carbon paste electrodes were used to evaluate an anodic stripping voltammetric method for the direct determination of arsenite and total inorganic arsenic (arsenite plus arsenate) in water samples. The effect of Ag((I)), Cu((II)), Hg((II)), Sb((III)) and Se((IV)) ions on the electrochemical response of arsenic was assayed. The developed electroanalytical method offers a rapid procedure with improved analytical characteristics including good repeatability (3.4%) at low As((III)) concentrations, high selectivity, lower detection limit (0.1 μg L(-1)) and high sensitivity (0.54 μA μg(-1) L). The analytical capability of the optimized method was demonstrated by the determination of arsenic in certified reference materials (trace elements in natural water, trace elements in water and coal fly ash).

Shape dependent stripping behavior of Au nanoparticles toward arsenic detection: evidence of enhanced sensitivity on the Au (111) facet

This work reports a comparative study of gold cubes {100}, octahedra {111}, and rhombic dodecahedra {110} toward the detection of arsenic for the first time. Au octahedral nanoparticles were found to exhibit the highest sensitivity.