Toward the Digital Electrochemical Recognition of Cobalt, Iridium, Nickel, and Iron Ion Collisions by Catalytic Amplification.

We report the electrochemical detection of femtomolar amounts of cobalt, iridium, nickel, and iron ions in solution by electrocatalyst formation and amplification. The metal oxides of these ions can be formed electrochemically and can catalyze the oxidation of water. Alternatively, the reduction of metal ions to metals, such as the reduction of IrCl6(3-) to iridium, is capable of electrocatalytically reducing protons to molecular hydrogen, as shown previously with Pt. These events, which manifest themselves in amperometry, correspond to the formation of electrocatalytic nuclei on the electrode surface, capable of electrocatalytically oxidizing water or reducing protons. An analysis of the frequency of anodic blips compared to theory implies that the requirement for water oxidation is 10 ± 1 ions of cobalt, 13 ± 4 ions of iridium, and 11 ± 3 ions of nickel. A similar analysis for iridium reduction and the corresponding catalytic reduction of protons implies that 6 ± 2 ions of iridium are required for proton reduction. These numbers are confirmed in an analysis of the time of first nucleation event, i.e. the time at which the first blip on the amperometric i-t experiment occurs. We further show that the anodic blips in detecting nickel increase in intensity upon increasing amounts of iron ions in solution to a ratio of Ni/Fe of ∼5, surprisingly close to that for bulk electrocatalysts of Ni-Fe.