Study on the Indirect Electrochemical Detection of Ammonium Ion with In Situ Electrogenerated Hypobromous Acid

The electrochemical oxidation of bromide in the presence of ammonium ion (NH ) was studied by cyclic voltammetry and UV‐vis spectroscopy. The experimental results suggested that the anodically generated bromine (Br₂) would be hydrolyzed to hypobromous acid (HBrO) at the pH range of 5–7 and was further disproportionate to hypobromite anion (BrO^?) when pH was larger than 7. Both HBrO and BrO^? were confirmed to be participated in the following homogeneous chemical reaction with the coexisted ammonium ion. However, HBrO is electroactive whereas BrO^‐ is electroinactive at carbon electrode. Based upon the reaction of HBrO with NH , an indirect electrochemical method was proposed for determination of NH with dual‐electrode configuration in phosphate buffer solution (pH 7), where HBrO was produced at a generator electrode and the excess HBrO was subsequently detected at a collector electrode after a reaction with NH in a batch solution or in a micro flow injection analytical (micro‐FIA) system by using an interdigitated array (IDA) Pt microelectrode and a carbon film ring‐disk electrode (CFRDE), respectively. The decreasing of reduction current at the collector electrode was proportional to the concentration NH in both systems, with the detection limit below 3.0 μM. This approach shows the advantage of highly selectivity even in presence of a large amount of coexisted cations, and was successfully applied for the determination of NH in environmental water samples.