Chemometric analysis of voltammetric-based sensing of heavy metal ions in aqueous solution for lead (Pb+2) ions

In the present work, we have developed a sensitive sensing scheme to identify lead ions in the aqueous water system at ultra-trace levels. The electrochemical technique, anodic stripping voltammetry (ASV) was used to quantify lead ion (Pb2+) in aqueous samples within the range of 10–50 μg/L concentration. The linear ASV signals were found in the 10–50 μg/L concentration range from the experimental work with the regression coefficient R2 0.975. Based on the standard deviation (0.14), the detection limit and quantification limit of the sensor was found to be 1.49 μg/L (S/N = 3) and 4.92 μg/L (S/N = 10), which is a smaller order of magnitude below the 10 μg/L thresholds for drinking water imposed by the World Health Organization. Further, Chemometric modelling was imposed to analyse the data appropriately. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to conduct a quantitative study and multiple response analysis of the sensor's behaviour to lead metal ions, demonstrating the proposed sensing scheme's excellent performance and stability. The PLSR model performance measures obtained include- R-square (0.99) and RMSE (0.90), indicating the reliability and robustness of the prediction model for testing unknown samples. Therefore, the proposed sensing scheme's effectiveness can be used for various environmental applications, making it a potential platform. [Display omitted] •This study proposes a novel sensing scheme to detect lead ions using a Au working electrode & Chemometrics modelling.•The proposed approach quantifies the sensor response as a function of multivariate redox processes using a multivariate analysis.•This unique optimisation approach produced robust and reliable results, r2 of 0.99, RMSE of 0.90, and LoD of 1.49 μg/L.