Reporting analytical performances of electrochemical sensors. Some suggestions

A careful description of the performances of electrochemical sensors is of critical importance for evaluating their novelty and potential applications. This usually requires the evaluation of some figures of merit, such as linear range (and the relevant functional relationship), limits of detection and quantification, recovery, trueness, selectivity and precision. Of course, testing a new electrochemical sensor does seldom need a complete validation study. This should be only necessary when developing an analytical method based on the use of that sensor. Most frequently, papers are mainly aimed at reporting details of the method used to prepare the sensor and of the experiments used for characterizing its chemical/electrochemical/morphological features. But, if some analytical performances of the proposed sensor are evaluated, than the reported figures of merit should allow a reasonably appropriate interpretation. However, while reviewing a series of paper dealing with some chemically modified glassy carbon electrodes [1], it was noticed that quite often the figures of merit presented to the readers were ill-defined and/or reported in an inadequate/wrong format [1,2]. In such a situation, some simple suggestions about how the above mentioned electrode performances should be reported might be quite useful. Based on many well-known books and guidelines, this contribution is aimed at suggesting how incorrect/unreasonable statements can be avoided when describing the analytical performances of a given sensor. The matter is presented with the help of few examples inherent to chemically modified electrodes. Authors wishing to report reasonably correct, unambiguous and clearly interpretable descriptions of the performances of their sensors will certainly front a certain (but not necessarily unsustainable) increase of costs and times of their investigations, but the results should gain an easier acceptance and applicability by the scientific community. [1] E. Desimoni, B. Brunetti, Electroanalysis, 24, 2012, 1481-1500 [2] E. Desimoni, B. Brunetti, Accred. Qual. Assur., 17, 2012, 365-637