Given
that catechol and nitrite can be easily released into the
environment and cause serious damage to our physical and ecological
environment, it is necessary to develop a fast and reliable detection
method for catechol and nitrite analysis. In our work, an electrochemical
catechol and nitrite sensor was created based on gold nanoparticles
(AuNPs) deposited on chitosan@N,S co-doped multiwalled carbon nanotubes
(CS@N,S co-doped MWCNTS) composite modified glassy carbon electrode.
The preliminary prepared composite materials were characterized by
transmission electron microscope, scanning electron microscope, X-ray
diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric
analysis. The AuNPs/CS@N,S co-doped MWCNTS modified electrode shows
a good linear relationship between 1 μmol·L–1 (μM) and 5000 μM for catechol, and the detection limit
was calculated as 0.2 μM. For nitrite the linear relationship
was 1–7000 μM with the detection limit of 0.2 μM.
The sensitivity of the created sensor was evaluated as 0.9081 μA·μM–1·cm–2 for catechol, and for
nitrite it was 0.7595 μA·μM–1·cm–2. Also the sensor shows significant selectivity, reproducibility,
and stability. Moreover, the modified electrode is also applied in
tap water samples for the catechol measurement and nitrite in fermented
bean curd, ham sausage, and mustard tuber samples.