Monitoring of Methyldopa by Fast Fourier Transform Continuous Cyclic Voltammetry at Gold Microelectrode

A continuous cyclic voltammetric study of methyldopa at gold micro electrode was carried out. The drug in phosphate buffer (pH 2.0) is adsorpted at 400 mV, giving rise to change in the current of well-defined oxidation peak of gold in the flow injection system. The proposed detection method has some of advantages, the greatest one of which are as follows: first, it is no more necessary to remove oxygen from the analyte solution and second, this is a very fast and appropriate technique for determination of the drug compound in a wide variety of chromatographic analysis methods. Signal-to-noise ratio has significantly increased by application of discrete Fast Fourier transform (FFT) method, background subtraction and two-dimensional integration of the electrode response over a selected potential range and time window. Also in this work some parameters such as sweep rate, eluent pH, and accumulation time and potential were optimized. The linear concentration range was of 1.0×10⁻⁷−1.0×10⁻¹¹ mol·L⁻¹ (r=0.9975) with a limit of detection and quantitation 0.004 nmol·L⁻¹ and 0.03 nmol·L⁻¹, respectively. The method has the requisite accuracy, sensitivity, precision and selectivity to assay methyldopa in tablets. The influences of pH of eluent, accumulation potential, sweep rate, and accumulation time on the determination of the methyldopa were considered.