Adsorptive Voltammetric Studies on the Cerium(III)–Alizarin Complexon Complex at a Carbon Paste Electrode

A novel procedure was developed for the determination of trace cerium on the basis of anodic adsorption voltammetry of the Ce(III)–alizarin complexon (ALC) complex at a carbon paste electrode (CPE). The procedure is convenient to determine cerium individually in the presence of other rare earths because there is a 100 mV difference between the peak potentials of Ce(III)–ALC and other rare earth(III)–ALC complexes in a supporting electrolyte of 0.08 M HAc–NaAc and 0.012 M potassium biphthalate (pH 4.7) when performing linear-scanning from −0.2 to 0.8 V (vs. SCE) at 100 mV/s. The second-order derivative peak currents are directly proportional to the Ce(III) concentration over a range of 6.0 × 10⁻⁹–3.0 × 10⁻⁷ M. The detection limit is as low as 2.0 × 10⁻⁹ M (S/N = 3) for a 120 s preconcentration. An RSD of 3.5% was obtained for 15 determinations of Ce(III) at a concentration of 4.0 × 10⁻⁸ M on the same CPE surface. The method was applied successfully to the determination of cerium in samples of rare earth nodular graphite cast iron.