Background:
Electrochemical methods in drug analysis have a lot of advantages including simplicity, speed,
low-cost instrumentation, informing about the drug mechanism, and non-affection by excipients in dosage forms.
Electrochemical techniques utilize the advantages of nanomaterials to increase sensitivity and, in some cases, selectivity.
Among these nanomaterials, metal oxide nanoparticles are also preferred by researchers because of their unique properties
such as biocompatibility, stability, non-toxicity, and catalytic characteristic
Objective:
This review provided a brief information about metal oxide nanoparticles used in electrochemical sensors and
summarized applications for drug analysis with these sensors in tables showing the studies in the literature during the last
decade
Results:
In the last decade, metal oxides are frequently used in electrochemical drug analysis as electrode modifier
individually and with other nanomaterials especially carbon-based ones. All these studies showed that metal oxide
nanoparticles increase the active surface area of the electrode and the catalytic activity.
Conclusion:
When metal oxide nanoparticles and carbon-based nanomaterials are used together, they create a synergistic
effect that further increases catalytic activity and thus lowers detection limits to be obtained in nM even pM levels