Electrochemical response of carbon paste electrode modified with mixture of titanium dioxide/zirconium dioxide in the detection of heavy metals: Lead and cadmium

A novel carbon modified electrode was developed by incorporating titanium dioxide/zirconium dioxide into the graphite carbon paste electrode to detect heavy metals—cadmium and lead. In this work, the development of the novel titanium dioxide/zirconium dioxide modified carbon paste electrode was studied to determine the optimum synthesis conditions related to the temperature, heating duration, amount and ratio of titanium dioxide/zirconium dioxide, and amount of surfactant, to create the most reproducible results. Using cyclic voltammetric (CV) analysis, this study has proven that the novel titanium dioxide/zirconium dioxide can be utilized to detect heavy metals—lead and cadmium, at relatively low concentrations (7.6×10−6 M and 1.1×10−5 M for Pb and Cd, respectively) at optimum pH value (pH=3). From analyzing CV data the optimal electrodes surface area was estimated to be 0.028 (±0.003) cm2. Also, under the specific experimental conditions, electron transfer coefficients were estimated to be 0.44 and 0.33 along with the heterogeneous electron transfer rate constants of 5.64×10−3 and 2.42×10−3 (cm/s) for Pb and Cd, respectively.