Development and characterization of ion selective electrode for the assay of antimony

The construction and general performance characteristics of two novel potentiometric carbon paste electrodes (CPE) responsive to antimony are described. These sensors are based on the use of the ion associate complexes of tetraiodoantimonate (TIA) anion with cetylpyridinium (CP) and triphenyl tetrazolium (TPT) counter cations as ion exchange site in a carbon paste matrix. The two sensors exhibits fast, stable and near-Nernstian for the mono charged TIA anion over the concentration range 1 × 10⁻³ to 10⁻⁶ M at 25 °C in the pH range 4-10 with anionic slope of 58.0 ± 0.5 and 55.0 ± 0.7 per concentration decade for TIA-CP and TIA-TPT, respectively. The lower detection limits are 4 and 5 × 10⁻⁶ M and response time are 20 and 30 s in the same order of both electrodes. Selectivity coefficients for antimony relative to a number of different cations and anions were investigated. There is negligible interference from many inorganic cation and anion except for Hg²⁺, Cd²⁺, and Bi³⁺; however, their effect were eliminated by EDTA. The determination of 1.0-120.0 μg/ml of antimony in aqueous solutions shows an average recovery of 99.0 and 97.5% with relative standard deviation of 2.0% for both electrodes at 40 μg/ml. The determination of antimony in wastewater and some antibilharzial compounds using the proposed electrodes gave results that compare favorably with those obtained by the atomic absorption spectrometric method. Precipitation titrations involving cetylpyridinium chloride as titrant are monitored with both electrodes with inflection point of 180 and 100 mV for TIA-CP and TIA-TPT, respectively.