Recent advances in the electrochemical detection of mercury

Electrochemical detection is one of the most important techniques for analysis of mercury. Electrodes with a high preconcentration capacity are employed to achieve a sensitive detection of mercury at concentrations harmless to health. The two most employed approaches in recent years are nanostructured electrodes and DNA-based assays. In the former case, electrodes with gold nanostructures, because their high affinity with mercury, and with carbon nanomaterials are the most reported. In the latter case, the strong bound between Hg(II) and thymine DNA bases allows the preconcentration of very small amounts of mercury. In this review, we critically evaluate the electrochemical detection of mercury reported in several works during the last few years.