Simultaneous determination of antioxidants at a chemically modified electrode with vitamin B12 by capillary zone electrophoresis coupled with amperometric detection

In the paper, a new kind of vitamin B12 (acquo-cobalamine) chemically modified electrode was fabricated and applied in capillary zone electrophoresis coupled with amperometric detection (CZE-AD) for simultaneous determination of six antioxidants in fruits and vegetables. The catalytic electrochemical properties of the chemically modified electrode could obviously enhance oxidation peak heights responses by about five times to glutathione, ascorbic acid, vanillic acid, chlorogenic acid, salicylic acid, and caffeic acid compared with common carbon disk electrode. Furthermore, the effects of working electrode potential, pH and concentration of running buffer, separation voltage and injection time on CZE-AD were investigated. Under the optimum conditions, the six analytes could be completely separated and detected in a borate–phosphate buffer (pH 8.4) within 15 min. Their linear ranges were from 2.5 × 10−7 to 1.0 × 10−4 mol L−1 and the detection limits were as low as 10−8 mol L−1 magnitude (S/N = 3). The proposed method has been successfully employed to monitor the six analytes in practical samples with recoveries in the range 96.0–106.0% and RSDs less than 5.0%. Above results demonstrate that capillary zone electrophoresis coupled with electrochemical detection using vitamin B12 modified electrode as detector is of convenient preparation, high sensitivity, good repeatability, and could be used in the rapid determination of practical samples.