Simultaneous determination of sugars and ascorbic acid by capillary zone electrophoresis with amperometric detection at a carbon paste electrode modified with polyethylene glycol and Cu2O

In this paper, a kind of novel carbon paste electrode modified with double modifiers—polyethylene glycol (PEG) and Cu2O (PEG/Cu2O CPME) in capillary zone electrophoresis with amperometric detection (CZE-AD) was applied to simultaneously determine three sugars: glucose, sucrose, fructose and ascorbic acid (AA). The catalytic electrochemical properties of PEG/Cu2O CPME could enhance sensitivity obviously compared with carbon paste electrode modified with only PEG or Cu2O at a relatively lower detection potential (+0.3 V versus SCE). Especially, the electrochemical detection response of AA increased obviously to the same level of saccharides by adding PEG into the Cu2O carbon paste modified electrode. The four analytes could be perfectly separated within 22 min, the linear ranges were from 1.0 × 10−6 to 5.0 × 10−5 mol L−1 and the detection limits were at 10−7 mol L−1 magnitude (S/N = 3). The present working electrode was successfully employed to analyse beverage samples with recoveries in the range 93–107% and RSDs less than 4%. Above results demonstrated that capillary zone electrophoresis coupled with the PEG/Cu2O carbon paste modified electrode was of convenient preparation, high sensitivity, good repeatability and could be used in the rapid determination of practical samples.