Electrochemical oxidation of phenanthrenequinone dioxime and its quantification using sensing at boron doped diamond electrode

•Dioximes were determined using unmodified boron-doped diamond electrode.•Differential pulse voltammetry was used.•The developed method was applied for determination of analyte in human blood serum samples.•Electrochemical oxidation mechanism was proposed.

Nowadays, there is small number of analytical procedures for the quantification of the phenanthrene and its derivatives, quinones and quinonedioximes. In recent years, different studies shows that potential application of these compounds and their complexes possess important role in many search areas, medicine, catalysis, sensors and bioorganic systems. In this paper, for the first time, we offer fast, sensitive, selective and reliable electroanalytical procedure for quantification of phenanthrenequinone dioxime (PQD) based on its oxidation. Also, its electrochemical behavior in water acidic media is given. Possible electrode mechanism based on these measurements was proposed. It was found that by employing differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) in Britton–Robinson buffer solution (BRBS) at pH 3.0 using boron-doped diamond (BDD) electrode calibration curve for PQD quantification was linear in the range of 0.3 to 7.0 μM with detection limit of 0.22 μM. Proposed method was successfully applied for the determination of PQD in blood samples with satisfactory recovery (96–102%). Proposed method can be beneficial in the chemistry of dioximes due to advantages of BDD electrode and sensitivity and selectivity of the electroanalytical procedures.