A New Composition for Co(II)-porphyrin-based Membranes Used in Thiocyanate-selective Electrodes

In the present paper, the potentiometric response characteristics of a metalloporphyrin-based electrode in o-nitrophenyloctylether (o-NPOE) plasticized polyvinyl chloride (PVC) membrane are presented for a set of monovalent anions. As membrane ionophore, 5,10,15,20-tetrakis-(4-methoxyphenyl)-porphyrin-Co(II) (CoTMeOPP) was used. To establish the optimum composition of the membrane, different molar percents of cationic derivative (mol.% relative to ionophore) were used. Electrodes formulated with membranes containing 1 wt.% ionophore, 66 wt.% o-NPOE, 33 wt.% PVC (plasticizer: PVC = 2:1) and the lipophilic cationic derivative (35 mol%) are shown to exhibit high selectivity for thiocyanate with a near-Nernstian slope in the working concentration range of 1.0×10(−1)–1.0×10(−5) M, with a good stability in time.