Electrocatalytic reduction of ortho nitrobenzaldehyde using modified aluminum electrode and its determination

A simple, cost effective and rapid electrochemical method has been developed for the determination of micro level ortho nitrobenzaldehyde (ONB) based on outstanding properties of modified aluminum electrode tin nanorods/anodic aluminum oxide/aluminum (SnNR/AAO/Al) for the first time. The SnNR/AAO/Al electrode was fabricated by a second step anodization, followed by electrodeposition and its electrochemical behavior was investigated in detail. The cyclic voltammetry results indicated that the SnNR/AAO/Al electrode exhibited efficient electrocatalytic activity toward reduction of ONB in the acidic solution. It provides an appreciable improvement of reduction peak for ONB at − 0.721 V. Furthermore, various kinetic parameters such as transfer electron number, transfer proton number and standard heterogeneous rate constant were calculated from the scan rates. The electrocatalytic behavior was further exploited as a sensitive detection scheme for the ONB determination by differential pulse voltammetry. Under the optimized conditions, the concentration range and detection limit are 0.1–100 μmol/L and 0.05 μmol/L, respectively, for ONB. The analytical performance of this modified sensor has been evaluated for detection of real sample such as river water and recovery of ONB was achieved all-out up to 102.3% under standard addition method.