Covalent modification of glassy carbon electrodes with beta-alanine for voltammetric separation of dopamine and ascorbic acid.

beta-Alanine was covalently grafted on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) by amine cation radical formation in the electrooxidation process of the amino-containing compound. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and cyclic voltammetry (CV) proved the immobilization of beta-alanine monolayer on GCE. The electrode shows strong electrocatalytic functions to dopamine (DA) and ascorbic acid (AA), reducing the overpotentials by 0.20 V and 0.23 V, respectively. Due to its different catalytic effects toward DA and AA, the modified electrode resolved the overlapping voltammetric responses of DA and AA into two well-defined voltammetric peaks by CV or differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), which can be used for the simultaneous determination of these species in a mixture. The catalytic peak current obtained from DPV was linearly related to DA and AA concentrations in the ranges of 4.0 x 10(-6)-5.0 x 10(-4) mol/L and 2.0 x 10(-5)-6.0 x 10(-3) mol/L with correlation coefficients of 0.997 and 0.995, respectively. The detection limits (3 sigma) for DA and AA were 2.4 x 10(-6) mol/L and 1.2 x 10(-5) mol/L, respectively. The electrode shows good sensitivity, selectivity and stability, and has been applied to the determination of DA and AA simultaneously in samples with satisfactory results.