Facilitated electrochemical oxidation of NADH and its model compound at gold electrode modified with terminally substituted electroinactive self-assembled monolayers

The electrochemical oxidation of NADH and its model compound, N-benzyl-1,4-dihydronicotinamide (DHN), has been studied at gold electrode modified with self-assembled monolayer of terminally substituted thiols/disulfide, i.e., cystamine (CYST), mercaptopropionic acid (MPA) and mercaptoethanol (ME). A substantial decrease in the overpotential (∼250 mV) when compared to the bare electrode has been observed for the oxidation of NADH at the monolayer-modified electrodes, containing no so-called redox mediator. The bare electrode shows an ill-defined voltammetric peak for the oxidation of DHN, whereas the monolayer-modified electrodes showed a well-defined voltammetric peak. The monolayer assembly on the gold electrode prevents the fouling of electrode surface by the oxidation products, which favors the oxidation at the less positive potential. The square-wave voltammograms showed a sharp voltammetric signal for the oxidation of NADH at all the monolayer-modified electrodes. All the monolayer-modified electrodes showed a linear current response to change in the NADH concentration in its range of 25–300 μM and their sensitivities were found to be 0.005±0.0003, 0.0063±0.0002 and 0.0052±0.0003 μA/μM for CYST–Au, ME–Au and MPA–Au electrodes, respectively. The hydrodynamic voltammograms obtained at the rotating CYST–Au electrode for the oxidation of NADH and DHN were used to estimate the diffusion coefficient of DHN, and the number of electrons involved in the oxidation process of NADH.