Eighty Years of Polarography – History and Future

Abstract

Since 1922, when Professor Jaroslav Heyrovsky ¬ carried out his pioneering experiment with a dropping mercury electrode, polarography showed remarkable ability to adjust to ever increasing demands on the sensitivity and selectivity and up to now mercury electrodes are among the best sensors for electroanalytical measurements. The aim of this contribution is to show both the historical development of these techniques and their presence and possible future developments and to show that even today in certain cases polarographic and voltammetric techniques on mercury electrodes can successfully compete with modern separation and spectrometric techniques.

Polarographic and voltammetric determination of genotoxic 4-nitroindane at mercury electrodes

“…Since classical polarography was invented and developed for analytical purposes by Heyrovský [24], mercury became the most reliable and suitable material for voltammetry of electrochemically reducible compounds [19,[25][26][27]. Indisputable attributes of liquid mercury, such as a wide potential window at negative potentials and a renewable atomically smooth surface (each mercury drop represents a freshly renewed surface), predestine it for wide-ranged applications [19,25,[28][29][30][31].…”

Bismuth Film Electrode for the Cathodic Electrochemical Determination of Thiamethoxam

“…In the search for a more environment-friendly electrode material that would replace the previously indispensable mercury electrode for the application in the negative potential range [1], an important step was the elaboration of bismuth film electrodes (BiFEs) [2,3]. BiFEs have found a wide range of application in anodic stripping voltammetry [4 -7], in potentiometric stripping analysis of trace metals [8 -10], as well as in cathodic adsorptive stripping voltammetry for the determination of some metals [11 -17].…”

Electrochemical Methods in Analysis of Biofuels

“…DME has historical importance in electrochemistry, since it was directly involved in the development of polarography by Heyrovsky [49] being this technique the precursor of the modern voltammetric techniques. In 2009 it was celebrated the 50 th anniversary of Heyrovsky's Nobel Prize for polarography and a celebrative review was written by Barek [100] this author was also involved in a very important and complete historical review about polarography written in 2002, year in which was celebrated eighty years of the discovery of polarography [101]. Despite its historical importance, the use of DME has decreased lately due mainly to environmental reasons and practical limitation for on-line and in situ analyses.…”