VOLTAMMETRY IN STATIC AND FLOWING SOLUTIONS WITH A LARGE-AMPLITUDE SINE WAVE POTENTIAL

Voltammetric detection is a potentially powerful method of detection for high performance liquid chromatography and flow injection analysis. A problem that needs a solution is its inferior detection limit compared to that obtained with amperometric detection. The shape of the potential waveform has been investigated in the search for methods of improving the detection limit of voltammetric detection. As a result, large amplitude sine wave potential perturbations have been found to give improved signal-to-noise ratios when compared to the values found for a corresponding triangle waveform (by a factor of from 1.1 to 5). This is principally due to the fact that the background current from a large amplitude triangle perturbation is spread over a wider frequency region. Signal processing techniques such as digital filtering have also been investigated. Digital bandpass filtering can be used to improve the signal to noise ratio by a factor of 2-13. Qualitative information (e.g., half-wave potential) is obtained through observing the phase angle at harmonics of the fundamental frequency.