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Determination of Estrogen Metabolites by HPLC-ECD at Boron-Doped Diamond and Nitrogen- Incorporated Tetrahedral Amorphous Carbon Thin Film Electrodes

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2016-01-01
JournalDigitalCommons-IMSA (Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy)
AuthorsJoy Qiu

The detection of pharmaceutical compounds, pollutants, and biological molecules plays a critical role in industrial analysis and water quality regulation. In particular, the effective determination of estrogen metabolites, a class of endocrine- disrupting compounds and potential urinary predictors of breast cancer, has great medical and environmental significance. High performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection (HPLC-ECD), a method which utilizes the relative polarities and electrochemical properties of the desired compounds, has before been employed for this purpose. In this study, we comparatively evaluated boron-doped diamond (BDD) and nitrogen-incorporated tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C:N) thin film electrodes, two novel materials which exhibit higher stability and versatility in comparison to other commonly used carbon materials, for use in the electrochemical detection of estriol, estradiol, and estrone. From a series of experiments, various figures of merit (quantitative indicators of performance, stability, utility, etc.) were determined for each electrode. In particular, the background and noise currents, optimum detection potential, short-term response variability, linear dynamic range, and detection limits for estriol, estradiol, and estrone at BDD and ta- C:N electrodes were calculated. Results indicate that ta-C:N, a more cost-efficient material, is equally as effective as BDD for the determination of the estrogen metabolites by HPLC-ECD.