A bicarbonate electrode Is made of a planar assembly of a thin (10-25 pm) neutral carrier-based hydrogen Ion selective solvent polymeric membrane and a thin (12 µ ) unbuffered Internal electrolyte layer on top of a planar sllver/sllver chloride reference element. The electrode responds In a Nernstlan manner to bicarbonate and has a detection limit of ~0.2 mM. Response and recovery times (f96%) as low as 30 e have been determined. The selectlvltles toward Inorganic physiological anions as well as toward acetate, lactate, ascorbate, and salicylate at pH 7.4 were tested, and no Interference was observed at their physiological or therapeutical levels. The lifetime of the electrode Is >1 month. The electrode Is proposed to be suitable for direct clinical blood bicarbonate determinations.A direct sensing of bicarbonate especially in clinical chemistry is of utmost relevance (1,2). Although there have been several claims for bicarbonate-selective liquid-membrane electrodes (3-9), no report concerning a realistic practical application of such a system in a direct assay of HC03~h as come to our attention. One liquid-membrane electrode praised for HC03" (4) was later shown to have high C032" selectivity. A sensor for HC03" has been described (6, 7) which is based on a hydrogen-ion-selective liquid membrane, and which simultaneously exhibits high permeability for C02. A superficially identical electrode type was described earlier but the proposed response mechanism appears to be different and is not corroborated by experiments (10). One of the bicarbonate-selective liquid-membrane electrodes using a tridecylammonium salt as the selective component ( 5) is probably based on a similar response mechanism.A severe drawback of such devices utilizing gas-permeable polymeric membranes is their low speed of response. Initially typical response times were around 5-15 min (6). By reduction of the membrane thickness from about 200 pm (6) to about 35 µ , the response time was decreased to slightly less than 2 min (7). For clinically relevant applications, response times as well as recovery times of about 30 s are required. Here we report on a bicarbonate-selective electrode obtained by using thin solvent polymeric membranes. In view of a possible integration with the monolith and field effect transistor (FET) technology (11) we have chosen a planar sensor configuration.EXPERIMENTAL SECTION Membrane Materials. High molecular weight poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC), potassium tetrakis(p-chlorophenyl)borate (KTpCIPB), tridodecylamine (TDDA), decane-1,10-diyl bis(lbutylpentyl)glutarate (ETH 469 (12)) have been obtained from Fluka,