Background-current subtraction in voltammetric detection for flow-injection analysis

Nonfaradaic Current Suppression in DNA-Based Electrochemical Assays with a Differential Potentiostat

One of the key factors limiting sensitivity in many electrochemical assays is the nonfaradaic or capacitive current. This is particularly true in modern assay systems based on DNA monolayers at gold electrode surfaces, which have shown great promise for bioanalysis in complex milieu such as whole blood or serum. While various changes in analytical parameters, redox reporter molecules, DNA structures, probe coverage, and electrode surface area have been shown useful, background reduction by hardware subtraction has not yet been explored for these assays. Here, we introduce new electrochemistry hardware that considerably suppresses nonfaradaic currents through real-time analog subtraction during current-to-voltage conversion in the potentiostat. This differential potentiostat (DiffStat) configuration is shown to suppress or remove capacitance currents in chronoamperometry, cyclic voltammetry, and square-wave voltammetry measurements applied to nucleic acid hybridization assays at the electrode surface. The DiffStat makes larger electrodes and higher sensitivity settings accessible to the user, providing order-of-magnitude improvements in sensitivity, and it also significantly simplifies data processing to extract faradaic currents in square-wave voltammetry (SWV). Because two working electrodes are used for differential measurements, unique arrangements are introduced such as converting signal-OFF assays to signal-ON assays or background drift correction in 50% human serum. Overall, this new potentiostat design should be helpful not only in improving the sensitivity of most electrochemical assays, but it should also better support adaptation of assays to the point-of-care by circumventing complex data processing.

Dopamine detection with fast-scan cyclic voltammetry used with analog background subtraction

Fast-scan cyclic voltammetry has been used in a variety of applications and has been shown to be especially useful to monitor chemical fluctuations of neurotransmitters such as dopamine within the mammalian brain. A major limitation of this procedure, however, is the large amplitude of the background current relative to the currents for the solution species of interest. Furthermore, the background tends to drift, and this drift limits the use of digital background subtraction techniques to intervals less than 90 s before distortion of dopamine signals occurs. To minimize the impact of the background, a procedure termed analog background subtraction is reported here. The background is recorded, and its inverse is played back to the current transducer during data acquisition so that it cancels the background in subsequent scans. Background drift still occurs and is recorded, but its magnitude is small compared to the original background. This approach has two advantages. First it allows the use of higher gains in the current transducer, minimizing quantization noise. Second, because the background amplitude is greatly reduced, principal component regression could be used to separate the contributions from drift, dopamine, and pH when appropriate calibrations were performed. We demonstrate the use of this approach with several applications. First, transient dopamine fluctuations were monitored for 15 min in a flowing injection apparatus. Second, evoked release of dopamine was monitored for a similar period in the brain of an anesthetized rat. Third, dopamine was monitored in the brain of freely moving rats over a 30 min interval. By analyzing the fluctuations in each resolved component, we were able to show that cocaine causes significant fluctuations in dopamine concentration in the brain while those for the background and pH remain unchanged from their predrug value.

Efficient Oxidizing Agents for Determination of 2,10-Disubstituted Phenothiazines

2,10-Disubstituted phenothiazines are the best drugs in psychiatry. Several methods for their analysis have been reported in the literature. The official methods are based on non-aqueous titration or spectrophotometry. Various oxidizing agents have been used for the spectrophotometric determination of 2,10-disubstituted phenothiazines, e.g. Ce(SO4)2, NH4VO3, K2S208, KIO4, KIO3, KBrO3, FeCl3, NaNO2, H2O2, chloramine T, p-benzoquinone, N-bromosuccinimide. Oxidation reactions of phenothiazines were also used for their determination by flow-injection methods.

Flow injection spectrophotometric determination of promazine

A method for the spectrophotometric determination of promazine by flow injection analysis is reported. The procedure is based on the reaction of promazine with molybdophosphoric acid. Concentrations of promazine in the range 1-25 ppm have been determined with a relative standard deviation of 1.8% at 10 ppm (n = 20). The method was applied to the determination of promazine in injections and compared favourably with an independent reference method based on spectrophotometry.