Design and Construction of New Potentiometric Sensors for Determination of Copper(II) Ion Based on Copper Oxide Nanoparticles

New chemically modified carbon paste (CPEs) and screen-printed electrodes (SPEs) were fabricated incorborating copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) as a neutral ionophore and explored as Cu(II) selective electrodes. The electrodes were found to display Nernstian response over Cu(II) concentration of 5.3×10-7 to 1×10-2 and 6.1×10-8 to 1×10-2 mol L-1. The detection limits were found to be 5.3×10-7 and 6.1×10-8 mol L-1 for modified carbon paste (MCPEs; electrodes I and II) and screen-printed electrodes (MSPEs; electrodes III and IV), respectively. The MCPEs with dibutylphthalate (DBP) (electrode I) and tricresylphosphate (TCP) (electrode II) as plasticizers were found to have slope values of 29.65±0.30 and 28.99±0.60 mV decade-1, respectively. Also, the MSPEs with DBP (electrode III) and TCP (electrode IV) plasticizers showed Nernstian slopes of 30.01±0.20 and 29.35±0.40 mV decade-1, respectively. The electrodes have fast response time (8, 10, 5 and 7s for electrodes I, II, III and IV, respectively) and good selectivity with respect to different interfering ions. The fabricated electrodes were satisfactory applied to determine Cu(II) ion in pure solutions and different real spiked water samples using the proposed potentiometric method. The results obtained applying MCPEs and MSPEs agree well with the inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES).