A New Highly Selective Neodymium(III) Polyvinylchloride Membrane Electrode Based on 4-Hydroxypyrrolidine-2-Carboxylic Acid as an Active Material

Abstract

The present paper describes the fabrication of a new polyvinylchloride (PVC) membrane electrode for the determination of Nd(III) ion based on 4-hydroxypyrrolidine-2-carboxylic acid (LHP) as an active material along with sodium tetraphenyl borate (NaTPB) as an anionic additive and acetophenone (AP) as solvent mediator. The optimum composition (%, w/w) of the best performing membrane contained 66 AP, 30 PVC, 2 NaTPB and 3 LHP. The basic analytical parameters of this electrode such as slope characteristics, detection limit, response time, selectivity and pH effect were assessed. The electrode displayed a Nernstian response in terms of slope (20.5 ± 0.4 mV per decade) and response time (~8 ± 1 s) over a wide neodymium ion concentration range of 10^–6 to 10^–2 M with a detection limit of 7.5 × 10⁻⁷ M. The potentiometric response of the electrode was constant in the pH range of 3.2‒8.9. According to the selectivity coefficients determined by the matched potential method, the interference of many common alkaline, alkaline earth, transition, heavy metals and specially lanthanide ions in determination of Nd(III) ion was very low. The proposed electrode has been successfully used as an indicator electrode in the potentiometric titration of Nd(III) ion with EDTA and applied for determination of Nd(III) ion in mixtures of different ions.