Flow injection potentiometric determination of silver(I) in photographic film developing solution samples by polyvinylchloride membrane silver(I) selective electrode

A polyvinylchloride (PVC) membrane silver(I) selective electrode was developed for the determination of silver(I) ions in photographic film developing solutions. The electrode was embedded into a home-made flow cell and successfully used as a potentiometric detector in a flow injection potentiometric (FIP) system. Under the optimized flow injection conditions, the electrode exhibited a non-Nernstian slope of 67.20±0.80 mV in the linear range from 1.0×10-5 to 1.0×10-1 mol/L (R2=0.9961) and the lowest value for limit of detection (LOD) was calculated as 7.1×10-6 mol/L. The electrode displayed good sensitivity, selectivity, repeatable and rapid response towards silver(I) ions. Lifetime of the electrode was determined as at least two months in FIP system. The electrode was also successfully applied for the potentiometric determination of silver(I) ions in photographic film developing solution samples in FIP system. The results attained from FIP system were compared with the atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) results by using student's t-test at 95 % confidence level and relative deviation (RD) between the two methods was < 8 %. © 2016, Chemical Society of Pakistan. All rights reserved.