Investigations of the selective enrichment of Cu2+, on gold electrode by electroless deposition

The selectively reductive enrichment of Cu2+ on the catalytic surface of the Au electrode by using the method of the electroless deposition was studied. In the electroless bath of Cu2+ + 0.02mol/L potassium-sodium tartrate (pH 10.5) + 0.00195 mol/L N2H4, a monolayer Cu was electrolessly deposited on the catalytic surface of the Au electrode. The enriching mechanism was investigated by using open circuit potentialtime technology (Op similar to t), cyclic voltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). It is found that the deposition of the Cu2+ on Au electrode possesses very good selectivity to a more complex solution system containing many other metal ions. A linear relationship between the DPV stripping current and the concentration of the Cu2+ ions in the electroless bath was observed in the range of 3 x 10(-6) similar to 1 X 10(-4) mol/L. The developed method was applied to the enrichment, reduction, separation and determination of the Cu2+ ions in the ore samples. The analytical results were compared with those of inductive coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometric method.