Environmentally persistent pharmaceutical pollutants (EPPPs) contaminate water bodies when the wastewater plant normally incompletely degrades the drug residues. Particularly, even very dilute concentration of EPPPs negatively impact the ecology and human health. Metformin (MTF) as a hypoglycemic drug has been commonly found in the domestic wastewater because its use increased dramatically with the increase in diabetic patients. The conventional chromatography method will not be effective when the detection of trace MTF becomes more frequent. This study applied the electrochemical method for sensing MTF. Copper oxide and reduction graphene oxide (Cu/rGO) composite electrodes were synthesized by the electro-deposition. X-ray diffraction spectrometer (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to characterize the properties of Cu/rGO. Modes of cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) were used to analyze the electrochemical behavior of Cu/rGO/GC in mediating electrons of MFT, and to calculate the electrochemical effective area (AECSA) and the transfer efficient of sensing MTF. Among the transition metals, Cu as one of group 11 metals was supposed to be active for sensing MTF because of the valence state 0/+I/+II transformation. The quality assurance and control were demonstrated to assess the applicability of electro-sensor compared to chromatography. The result showed that Cu0.7rGO0.3 was the best metal-to-carbon ratio according to its highest sensitivity of the oxidation peak current to the MTF concentration, which the valid concentration range was 2-50 μM, the linearity of current to concentration was 0.115, detecting limit was 0.21 µM, and the analytical recovery reached 97±12%.

Electrochemical characteristics of copper nanoparticles deposited on reduced graphene oxide (CuxrGO1-x) as highly sensitive sensor for metformin

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