Determination of histamine in fish muscle at multi-walled carbon nanotubes coated conducting polymer modified glassy carbon electrode

•A new electrochemical sensor is developed for the determination of histamine.•The method is based on carbon nanotubes coated polymer modified carbon electrode.•Under optimized conditions, the linear range is between 0.1 and 100.0 μM histamine.•The detection limit of 7.62 × 10−8 M is the lowest of similar reports for the analyte.•The developed method is successfully applied for fish muscle analysis.

Glassy carbon electrode was modified with multi-walled carbon nanotubes, electropolymerized 4-amino-3-hydroxynaphthalene sulfonic acid, and their layer-by-layer composite. The electrodes were used to study the oxidation of an important fish spoilage indicator, histamine. Enhanced current responses and lower peak potentials were observed for histamine oxidation at modified electrodes compared to the bare electrode. Among the modified electrodes, a better catalytic response was observed using the multi-walled carbon nanotubes coated polymer modified glassy carbon electrode. This composite electrode was employed for the analytical determination of histamine after experimental parameters were optimized. Under optimum conditions, the oxidation peak current increased linearly with the concentration of histamine over the range of 1.0 × 10−7 to 1.0 × 10−4 M. The calculated limit of detection (3σ) and limit of quantitation (10σ) were 7.62 × 10−8 M and 2.54 × 10−7 M, respectively. The electrode showed excellent repeatability (2.80%) and reproducibility (4.60%) for measurements at 10.0 × 10−6 M histamine. The method was also successfully applied for the determination of histamine in fish muscle extract and spiked sample recovery results were in the range of 96.6–102.9%.