A Sensitive Electrochemical Sensor Based on Solution Polymerized Molecularly Imprinted Polymers for Procaine Detection

A sensitive and selective method for the determination of procaine hydrochloride using molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) modified glassy carbon electrodes was developed. The MIPs were prepared by solution polymerization using procaine hydrochloride as the template molecules and acrylic acid (AA) and vinyltriethoxysilane (WD-20) as the functional monomer and crosslinking agent, respectively. A film was formed on the surface of the glassy carbon electrodes and later cross-linked with ethanol as solvent. Next, these electrodes were employed to detect procaine hydrochloride by differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). Under the optimized conditions, good linearity (correlation coefficient of 0.9986) was observed between the oxidation peak current and the concentration of procaine hydrochloride in the range of 4.0 x 10(-8) to 2.4 x 10(-5) M in a pH 7.0 0.04 M phosphate buffer solution, and the detection limit (S/N=3) was 1.02 x 10(-8) M. In addition, the stability and reproducibility of the sensors were satisfactory. Moreover, the concentration of procaine hydrochloride in human blood serum samples was detected, and its recoveries ranged from 97.5% to 106.4% with RSD less than 2.15%. These results suggest that the prepared molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors can be used for the determination of procaine in clinical studies.