Direct electrochemistry of copper oxide nanoparticles in alkaline media

The use of metallic nanoparticles in consumer products is growing, posing health threatening issues as they are being released into the environment As such, there is an urgent need for a facile method to be used for the detection and quantification of metallic nanoparticles present in a sample. In this work, the electrochemical behavior of copper oxide nanoparticles in alkaline media has been exploited to develop a sensitive electrochemical method for their determination achieving a quantification limit of 50 ng. This technique may be also applied for quantification of other metallic nanoparticles in the future. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.