An electrochemical sensor platform for sensitive detection of iron (III) ions based on pyrene-substituted poly(2,5-dithienylpyrrole)

Abstract

Conducting polymers, which have a great potential for use in many technological application areas, can be used to design new selective, sensitive, highly efficient and practical sensor platforms. Herein, a pyrene-substituted 2,5-dithienylpyrrole (TPP) has been synthesized and its conductive polymer has been coated electrochemically on the ITO electrode surface to form a new sensor platform. After electrochemical and surface characterization of conducting polymer based sensor platform, its electrochemical responses to different metal ions have been investigated in aqueous media. It has been determined that P(TPP) displays excellent potentiometric response to Fe(III) ions while there is no significant electrochemical signal observed in other metal ion solutions including Fe(II), Zn(II), Cu(II), Hg(II), Cd(II). P(TPP) sensor platform has exhibited high stability, sensitivity, reproducibility toward the determination of Fe(III) with a good detection limit of 1.73 × 10-7 M. The sensor platform has great potential for disposable low-cost metal ion sensing platform which is convenient in-field testing application could be used in aqueous and biological samples.