Sunday, February 9, 2014

A sensor-ble solution

A confession: I like cool stuff. I like products which solve problems. Being an analytical chemist, I particularly like products which solve problems in analytical chemistry. Not so long ago, I was shown a new development from Metrohm which I regard as just straight out, simply cool. It's an ion selective probe for calcium determinations, which uses replaceable, thick-film technology sensor tips.


 Now, as you will note from previous posts, my niche speciality is thermometric endpoint titrimetry (TET). In comparison with TET, I don't know all that much about measurement with potentiometric sensors outside of pH electrodes, and previous experiences with ISE's haven't been all that positive. However, this new approach by Metrohm seems to be a most pragmatic approach to the problem of limited service lives of polymer membrane ISE probes, and that is, simply replace just the sensing tip rather than the entire probe.

I guess that following through on this pragmatic approach, they've chosen a Ca-selective probe, as this could have considerable market appeal in the titrimetric analysis of water hardness. It will be interesting to see how the market accepts it, and if they follow this with tips which are selective for other ions. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hello Labrat,

we've applied the same principle (exchangable, screen-printed sensor tips) to the new scTRACE Gold, a new sensor for the sensitive determination of arsenic by voltammetry. Just look for "scTRACE Gold" on our website metrohm.com

Cheers, Roman