Development of a portable electrochemical platform with chip-integrated gold electrodes for detection of pharmaceutical pollutants

Electrochemical portable sensing systems can offer a viable solution in the analysis of environmental contaminants due to the down-size capability of the electronic components and, overall, to the simplicity of the detection principles. In the present work, a new electrochemical portable platform (EPP) with miniaturized chip-integrated gold electrodes was developed and applied for the determination of the drug acetaminophen (APAP) as a model analyte. The produced miniaturized chip-integrated gold electrodes were firstly characterized via atomic force and scanning electron microscopy, integrated in the EPP and subsequently the complete set-up was tested for electrochemical detection of APAP. The results showed adequate performance of the developed EPP when compared to a traditional electrochemical system under optimal conditions (pH 8, deposition potential 0.1 V, deposition time 240 s and scan rate of 50 mV.s^-1), with a sensitivity of 1.6 μA.mM^-1 and limit of detection of 67 µM. The EPP was validated in river and wastewater samples, achieving recoveries ranging from 93.0 to 96.6%.