Introducing Cobalt(II) porphyrin/Cobalt(III) corrole containing transducers for improved potential reproducibility and performance of all-solid-state ion-selective electrodes

A novel solid contact type for all-solid-state ion-selective electrodes is introduced, yielding high stability and reproducibility of potential readings between sensors as well as improved analytical performance. The transducer phase herein proposed takes advantage of the presence of porphyrinoids containing the same metal ion at different oxidation states. In contrast to the traditional approach, the compounds of choice are not a redox pair; although they have different oxidation states, they cannot be electrochemically driven one to another. The compounds of choice were cobalt(II) porphyrin and cobalt(III) corroleboth characterized by a high stability of the coordinated metal ions in their respective redox states and electrical neutrality, as well as relatively high lipophilicity. The porphyrinoids were used together with carbon nanotubes to yield transducer layers for ion-selective electrodes. As a result, we obtained a high stability of potential readings of the resulting ion-selective electrodes together with good reproducibility between different sensor batches. Moreover, advantageously the presence of porphyrinoids in the transducer phase results in improvement of the analytical performance of the sensors: linear response range and selectivity due to interactions with membrane components, resulting in tailoring of ion fluxes through the membrane phase. Thus, carbon nanotubes with the cobalt(II) porphyrin/cobalt(III) corrole system are promising alternatives for existing transducer systems for potentiometric sensors.