Palladium nanoparticles/wool keratin-assisted carbon composite-modified flexible and disposable electrochemical solid-state pH sensor

Several p H-dependent processes and reactions take place in the human body;hence,the p H of body fluids is the best indicator of disturbed health conditions.However,accurate and real-time diagnosis of the p H of body fluids is complicated because of limited commercially available p H sensors.Hence,we aimed to prepare a flexible,transparent,disposable,userfriendly,and economic strip-based solid-state p H sensor using palladium nanoparticles(Pd NPs)/N-doped carbon(NC)composite material.The Pd NPs/NC composite material was synthesized using wool keratin(WK)as a precursor.The insitu prepared Pd NPs played a key role in the controlled switching of protein structure to the N-doped carbon skeleton withπ–πarrangement at the mesoscale level,which mimics the A–B type polymeric structure,and hence,is highly susceptible to H+ions.The optimized carbonization condition in the presence of Pd NPs showed that the material obtained using a modified Ag/Ag Cl reference electrode had the highest p H sensitivity with excellent stability and durability.The optimized p H sensor showed high specificity and selectivity with a sensitivity of 55 m V/p H unit and a relative standard deviation of 0.79%.This study is the first to synthesize Pd NPs using WK as a stabilizing and reducing agent.The applicability of the sensor was investigated for biological samples,namely,saliva and gastric juices.The proposed protocol and material have implications in solid-state chemistry,where biological material will be the best choice for the synthesis of materials with anticipated performance.     

FAST DENSE MATRIX METHOD FOR THE SOLUTION OF INTEGRAL EQUATIONS OF THE SECOND KIND

We present a fast algorithm based on polynomial interpolation to approximate matrices arising from the discretization of second-kind integral equations where the kernel function is either smooth, non-oscillatory and possessing only a finite number of singularities or a product of such function with a highly oscillatory coefficient function. Contrast to wavelet-like approximations, ourapproximation matrix is not sparse. However, the approximation can be construced in O(n) operations and requires O(n) storage, where n is the number of quadrature points used in the discretization. Moreover, the matrix-vector multiplication cost is of order O(nlogn). Thus our scheme is well suitable for conjugate gradient type methods. Our numerical results indicate that the algorithm is very accurate and stable for high degree polynomial interpolation.