Since nitrate ingestion above a critical level induces myriad health problems, the determination of nitrate in drinking water is of great importance. A team at the State Key Laboratory of Transducers Technology at the Institute of Electronics in China developed a new type of micro amperometric sensing chip based on gold interdigitated microband array electrode for nitrate determination.
Typical sensors based on photochemical methods are not only expensive and toxic, but also limited by common interferences. Thus, a new method for determination was the aim of this study. It was found that interface analysis with 9 kinds of ions commonly found in surface water indicates good selectivity to nitrate in the proposed microchips. The most important aspect for field and real-time nitrate monitoring in natural water is that 3D nano-structured dendritic silver modified Au-IDA microelectrode can be used for nitrate analysis in neutral media.
Authors: Jingfang Hu, Jizhou Sun, Chao Bian, Jianhua Tong, Shanhong Zia.
The study was published by NISCAIR-CSIR, India and can be found on the NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository.
