Conclusion

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Analytical Sciences Digital Library

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This experiment can be used to introduce electroanalytical chemistry skills to undergraduate students as well as the concept of electrochemical sensors. Modified chemical sensors are certainly one of the exciting developments of the last two decades. Modified electrodes can be utilized as chemical sensors for the detection of organic and biological molecules of industrial and medicinal interest. This laboratory can be carried out in approximately 10-12 hours of lab time. It allows the introduction and development of chemical sensors and modified electrodes, and it teaches the common interferents encountered, the use of the potentiostat-galvanostat, and the use of a cyclic voltammogram. This lab can be expanded into analyzing the modified surfaces with Scanning Electron Microscopy if time permits. The scope of this lab can be further expanded into the study of a) other common neurotransmitters and biological molecules, b) other common interferents in the detection of biological molecules and neurotransmitters, c) the use of other modified-polymer electrodes as sensors and d) improvements in the modified polymer electrode preparation.

Our students have found this laboratory to be both rewarding and challenging. It has required them to think the actual instrumental procedures and about the analysis of the results. This laboratory experiment can be tailored for more advanced students by using more than one interferent and more than one neurotransmitter for these studies. Students could be required to learn additional instrumentation skills, such as amperometric detection/flow-injection detection of biological molecules of interest utilizing a modified polymer electrode. This type of study is really unlimited and relates well to students’ interest in everyday biological molecules.