Environmental pollution spurred by dint of noxious chemicals and heavy metals has popped up as a pressing threat for present day community. Herein, we synthesized the N,N'-(ethane 1,2-diyl)bis(4-acetylbenzene-1-sulfonamide) (EDBABS) and N,N'-(cyclohexane-1,2-diyl)bis(4-acetylbenzenesulfonamide) (CDBABS) as bidentate chelating agents with the aim to detect heavy metal cations in water systems. Characterization techniques such as UV-Vis, FT-IR, ¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR and single crystal XRD were performed for structure elucidation of these newly synthesized bidentate chelating agents. After that, a novel electrochemical, current – potential (I-V), approach based on their modified Glassy Carbon Electrodes (GCEs) was applied to detect the toxic cations. For this purpose, Keithley electrometer was employed as constant voltage source. For the detection of heavy metal cations, EDBABS & CDBABS coupled with nafion and coated separately onto the GCEs as selective electrochemical sensor. It was observed that newly designed EDBABS/Nafion/GCE induced a high current response for Ba²⁺ cations in the presence of interfering heavy metal cations (Y³⁺, Sn²⁺, Sb³⁺, Mn²⁺, Hg²⁺, Cr³⁺, As³⁺ & Ag⁺) than CDBABS/Nafion/GCE and found to be selective and sensitive towards Ba²⁺ cations. To optimize this newly designed EDBABS/Nafion/GCE as selective electrochemical Ba²⁺ cationic sensor, calibration curve emerged to be linear with a broad concentration range of Ba²⁺cations (0.1 nM to 0.01 M) and sensitivity was estimated as 3.481 × 10^-3µAµM^-1cm^-2 in addition to low detection limit (LOD) as 0.027nM. Within the realm of extensive environmental protection and public health care field, this work inducts a reliable and effective way for the fabrication of sensitive as well as selective cationic electrochemical sensors based on chelating agents which can be used for quick probing of heavy metal cations in water systems.

Muhammad Nadeem Arshad

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