A novel electronic tongue using electropolymerized molecularly imprinted polymers for the simultaneous determination of active pharmaceutical ingredients

The combination of chemometrics and electrochemical sensors modified with molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) towards the development of MIP-based electronic tongues (ETs) was explored herein. To demonstrate the potential of such an approach, the simultaneous determination of paracetamol, ascorbic acid and uric acid mixtures in pharmaceutical samples was evaluated. To this aim, MIP-based sensors for the different compounds were prepared by in situ electropolymerization of pyrrole in the presence of p-toluenesulfonate anion (pTS−), which acted as functional doping ion of the polypyrrole (PPy) MIP backbone. Morphological characterization of the MIPs was done by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), while functionalization of the electrodes was monitored electrochemically. Under the optimized measuring conditions, the developed sensors showed a good performance, with good linearity at the μM level (R2 > 0.992, limits of detection between 1 and 24 μM) as well as good repeatability (intra- and inter-day RSD values between 3 and 6% over 30 consecutive measurements). Finally, the quantification of the individual substances in different pharmaceutical samples was achieved by an artificial neural networks (ANNs) model, showing satisfactory agreement between expected and obtained values (R2 > 0.987).