At low concentrations, Pb(II) is very hard to accurately detect in drinking water. A team around YANG Meng at the Institute of Intelligent Machines prepared a porous flower-like NiO/rGO nanocomposite and managed to achieve high performance sensitive sensing of Pb(II) with square wave anodic stripping voltammetry (SWASV). They found an excellent performance of this nanocomposite modified-electrode for Pb(II) analysis which combines the good catalysis of NiO with high adsorption and conductivity of rGO, as well as enhanced redox activity by Ni(II)/Ni(III) cycling on the surface of NiO/rGO nanocomposite. In further tests in real water environment with wastewater collected from a sewage disposal plant in the local community. The test results were in accordance with those obtained in the lab.

CAS news release, April 30, 2019