Electrochemical Determination Of Thioglycolic Acid At Gold Electrode

Abstract

Thioglycolic acid (TGA) is an organic compound widely used in cosmetics that cause various health problems when overexposed to it. So far many attempts have been made to develop methods for TGA determination. Therefore, a simple, cheap, and sensitive determination method of TGA is highly desired. In this work, the electrochemical determination of TGA is reported. The oxidation current response of TGA at the gold (Au) electrode is investigated using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) methods. A comparison was made between the performance of glassy carbon (GC), Platinum (Pt), & Au electrodes toward the determination of TGA. Due to the different interactions of the TGA at the electrode surface, the Au electrode signal intensity of the developed method is much higher than GC and Pt electrodes in acetate buffer. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the electrode intensity has a direct relationship with the concentration of TGA in the range of 0.5 μM to 200 μM and a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.02 μM. The reported Au electrode has further been applied to determine TGA in hair perm with acceptable recoveries.