Array of potentiometric sensors for simultaneous analysis of urea and potassium

Urea biosensors based on urease immobilized by crosslinking with BSA and glutharaldehyde coupled to ammonium ion-selective electrodes were included in arrays together with potassium, sodium and ammonium PVC membrane ion-selective electrodes. Multivariate calibration models based on PCR and PLS2 were built and tested for the simultaneous determination of urea and potassium. The results show that it is possible to obtain PCR and PLS2 calibration models for simultaneous determination of these two species, based on a very small set of calibration samples (nine samples). Coupling of biosensors with ion-selective electrodes in arrays of sensors raises a few problems related to the limited stability of response and unidirectional cross-talk of the biosensors, and this matter was also subjected to investigation in this work. Up to three identical urea biosensors were included in the arrays, and the data analysis procedure allowed the assessment of the relative performance of the sensors. The results show that at least two urea biosensors should be included in the array to improve urea determination. The prediction errors of the concentration of urea and potassium in the blood serum samples analyzed with this array and a PLS2 calibration model, based on nine calibration samples, were lower than 10 and 5%, respectively.