Selective recognition of 5-hydroxytryptamine and dopamine on a multi-walled carbon nanotube-chitosan hybrid film-modified microelectrode array.

It is difficult to determine dopamine (DA) and 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) accurately because of the interference of ascorbic acid (AA) in vitro, which has a high concentration and can be oxidized at a potential close to DA and 5-HT at a conventional electrode, combined with the overlapping voltammetric signal of DA and 5-HT at a bare electrode. Herein, chitosan (CS) was used as a stabilizing matrix by electrochemical reaction, and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were modified onto the microelectrode array (MEA). The CS-MWCNT hybrid film-modified MEA was quite effective at simultaneously recognizing these species in a mixture and resolved the overlapping anodic peaks of AA, DA and 5-HT into three well-defined oxidation peaks in differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) at -80 mV, 105 mV and 300 mV (versus Ag|AgCl), respectively. The linear responses were obtained in the range of 5 × 10(-6) M to 2 × 10(-4) M for DA (r = 0.996) and in the range of 1 × 10(-5) M to 3 × 10(-4) M for 5-HT (r = 0.999) using the DPV under the presence of a single substance. While DA coexisted with 5-HT in the interference of 3 × 10(-4) M AA, the linear responses were obtained in the range of 1 × 10(-5) M to 3 × 10(-4) M for selective molecular recognition of DA (r = 0.997) and 5-HT (r = 0.997) using the DPV. Therefore, this proposed MEA was successfully used for selective molecular recognition and determination of DA and 5-HT using the DPV, which has a potential application for real-time determination in vitro experiments.