Enhanced sensing of anthraquinone dyes using multiwalled carbon nanotubes modified electrode

Abstract The voltammetric behaviour of two anthraquinone dyes such as Alizarin Red S (ARS) and Reactive blue 4 (RB4) was investigated at plain glassy carbon electrode (GCE), multiwalled carbon nano tube modified GCE (MWCNT/GCE) and zeolite modified GCE (ZE/GCE) using cyclic voltammetry. Effects of pH, scan rate and concentration were studied. The surface morphology of the modified electrode in the absence and presence of dye molecules was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A systematic study on the variation of experimental parameters with differential pulse stripping voltammetry (DPSV) was carried out and the optimized experimental conditions were arrived. MWCNT/GCE performed well among the three electrode systems and the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.036 µg mL−1 for ARS and 0.05 µg mL−1 for RB4 on this modified system. Suitability of the differential pulse stripping voltammetric method for the trace determination of textile dyes in effluents was also realized. Keywords: textile dyesdifferential pulse stripping voltammetryglassy carbon electrodemultiwalled carbon nano tube (MWCNT)zeolite (ZE)