Highly sensitive electrochemical assay for selective detection of Aminotriazole based on TiO2/poly(CTAB) modified sensor

This research work describes the electrochemical activity of aminotriazole (ATZ) by constructing titanium-dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2) and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) based carbon paste electrode (TiO2/CTAB-CPE). Square wave voltammetric technique was employed to investigate herbicide, ATZ in the soil as well as in water samples. The characterization of TiO2 nanoparticles was achieved using XRD and TEM techniques. Owing to the supreme sensing properties, TiO2/CTAB-CPE was recognized as sensitive for the detection of ATZ as the sensor demonstrated improved catalytic characteristics and peak current in presence of pH 7.0 of 0.2 PBS i.e., phosphate buffer solution through cyclic voltammetric (CV) along with square wave voltammetric (SWV) techniques. The peak current for the modified CPE observed to be 18.92μA with peak potential 0.912 V and for the bare carbon paste electrode (BCPE) the peak current is 4μA with the peak potential at 0.975 V. The impact of electro-kinetic parameters including heterogeneous rate constant, scan rate, transfer coefficient, pH, activation energy, accumulation time, temperature effect, and also the number of electrons and protons entailed in the ATZ electro-oxidation was resolved. The detection limit and the quantification limit of the ATZ was found to be 2.53 nM and 8.44 nM respectively. The proposed method proved to be a propitious procedure for precise determination of the ATZ herbicide in water and soil samples.