A flow injection method for the analysis of tetracycline antibiotics in pharmaceutical formulations using electrochemical detection at anodized boron-doped diamond thin film electrode

A method using flow injection (FI) with amperometric detection at anodized boron-doped diamond (BDD) thin films has been developed and applied for the determination of tetracycline antibiotics (tetracycline, chlortetracycline, oxytetracycline and doxycycline). The electrochemical oxidation of the tetracycline antibiotics was studied at various carbon electrodes including glassy carbon (GC), as-deposited BDD and anodized BDD electrodes using cyclic voltammetry. The anodized BDD electrode exhibited well-defined irreversible cyclic voltammograms for the oxidation of tetracycline antibiotics with the highest current signals compared to the as-deposited BDD and glassy carbon electrodes. Low detection limit of 10 nM (signal-to-noise ratio = 3) was achieved for each drug when using flow injection analysis with amperometric detection at anodized BDD electrodes. Linear calibrations were obtained from 0.1 to 50 mM for tetracycline and 0.5–50 mM for chlortetracycline, oxytetracycline and doxycycline. The proposed method has been successfully applied to determine the tetracycline antibiotics in some drug formulations. The results obtained in percent found (99.50–103.01%) were comparable to dose labeled.