Development of a Simple and Inexpensive Optical Absorption One‐Shot Sensor Membrane for Detection and Determination of Cyanide Ions in Water Samples

A new one‐shot optical cyanide ion sensor is proposed for determination of cyanide ions. The sensor was constructed by immobilizing crystal violet (CV) on triacetylcellulose membrane. The sensing mechanism involves reaction between cyanide ions and the immobilized CV at pH = 5.4, which results in a decrease in absorbance of the membrane at 600 nm. The sensor shows sufficient repeatability, reproducibility, operational lifetime of 3 weeks, and a response of less then 10 min under the optimum conditions and response time of 8 min. Cyanide can be determined in the concentration range of 50.0‐800 μg mL^‐1 with a detection limit of 5.0 μg mL^‐1. Most ions do not interfere with the determination of cyanide ions. The proposed sensor was successfully applied to the determination of cyanide in spiked water samples.