Flow injection amperometric determination of acetaminophen at a gold nanoparticle modified carbon paste electrode

An amperometric detector with a gold nanoparticle modified carbon paste electrode (GNMCPE) was applied applied to flow injection analysis for the determination of acetaminophen. An obvious shift of the peak potential and increase of the current peak were observed for the GNMCPE in comparison to that of the bare carbon paste electrode. The experimental conditions, such as species of buffer, pH, flow rate, detection volume, injection volume, and injection time were investigated. Under the optimized conditions, the calibration curve was obtained over the concentration range of 0.1-80 mg L-1 of acetaminophen with a linear correlation coefficient of 0.9994. The detection limit (3 sigma) was estimated to be 0.05 mg L-1 (n = 7). The recoveries of acetaminophen were between 98.40% and 104.1%, and the relative standard deviation varied between 1.66% and 2.74% for the different samples. This method was applied to analyze six types of tablets obtained from a local drugstore. The contents of acetaminophen were found to be 0.498, 0.323, 0.249, 0.324, 0.319 and 0.323 g of each tablet, respectively. These results are consistent with the values obtained by high performance liquid chromatography.