Pulsed electrodeposition of palladium nano-particles on coated multi-walled carbon nanotubes/nafion composite substrates: Electrocatalytic oxidation of hydrazine and propranolol in acid conditions

• Electrochemical deposition of Pd oxides on MWCNT-Nafion substrates.
• SEM, XPS, CV characterization of the resulting CNT-Pd modified electrodes.
• Electrochemical characterization of the CNT-Pd modified electrodes.
• DPV analysis of hydrazine and propranolol on the CNT-Pd modified electrode.

The palladium species were deposited on the multi-walled carbon nanotubes dispersed in nafion membrane by pulsed electrodeposition technique. The resulting modified electrode was defined CNT-Pd. The Pd electrodeposition was carried out in 50 mM H2SO4 solution containing 4.0 mM Pd(NO3)2 using a double pulse sequence of potentials: E1 = −0.4 V vs SCE (t1 = 0.03 s) and E2 = 0.4 V vs SCE (t2 = 3 s). SEM analysis showed a well-efficient distribution of Pd nanoparticles dispersed along the nanotubes randomly oriented in the nafion matrix. A surface loading of electrodeposited Pd species comprised between 2.0 nmol and 2.5 nmol was generally observed. The prepared electrode is useful to catalyze the electrooxidation of hydrazine and propranolol. The electroanalytical properties of the electrode were evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). Under optimized DPV conditions, the CNT-Pd electrode exhibits interesting analytical performance in terms of linear range of concentrations, low detection limits (i.e., 8 μM and 2 μM for hydrazine and propranolol, respectively) and good temporal stability of the responses (i.e., 4%–5%).