A novel planar miniaturized potentiometric sensor for flow injection analysis of nitrates in wastewaters, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals

A novel all-solid-state miniaturized nitrate sensor is developed, characterized and used for flow injection analysis (FIA) of nitrates in various samples. The sensor incorporates silver bis(bathophenanthroline) nitrate [Ag(bath)2NO3] as an electroactive material in a plasticized PVC membrane. The sensing membrane (3 mm × 5 mm) is immobilized on a wafer polyimide microchip (size 13.5 mm × 3.5 mm) to offer a planar miniaturized design easily used in a single channel wall-jet flow injection system. Under hydrodynamic mode of operation (FIA) the sensor displays fast response, high sensitivity, long term stability and good selectivity for NO3− in the presence of many common associated anions. The calibration slope is 55.1 ± 0.1 mV decade−1 over the concentration range 1.0 × 10−1 to 1.0 × 10−6 mol L−1, the lower detection limit is 0.05 μg mL−1, the working pH is 2–9,and the output is 70–90 samples h−1. Validation of the assay method reveals good performance characteristics and suggests application for routine determination of NO3− in industrial wastewaters, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. The results agree fairly well with data obtained by the standard spectrophotometric methods.