Electrochemical behaviour of gold, silver, platinum and palladium on the glassy carbon electrode modified by chitosan and its application

The chitosan-modified glassy carbon electrode can be used as a working electrode for the determination of precious metal elements: Au, Ag, Pt, Pd. In low pH medium, the complex anions of these precious elements combine with the protonated group -NH3+ in the chitosan molecule in the form of an ion-association complex. These metal ions were selectively enriched and we got sensitive anodic stripping current. These elements content in ore, welding material have been determined by this method. The results were consistent with those from standard sample and ICP atomic emission spectrometry method. The possible mechanism of electrochemical reaction has been proposed by the study of CV, UV and FT-Raman spectrometry. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.