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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1973 Jul;70(7):1909–1911. doi: 10.1073/pnas.70.7.1909

Equilibrium Potentials of Membrane Electrodes

Jui H Wang 1, Eva Copeland 1
PMCID: PMC433630  PMID: 4516194

Abstract

A simple thermodynamic theory of the equilibrium potentials of membrane electrodes is formulated and applied to the glass electrode for measurement of pH. The new formulation assumes the selective adsorption or binding of specific ions on the surface of the membrane which may or may not be permeable to the ion, and includes the conventional derivation based on reversible ion transport across membranes as a special case. To test the theory, a platinum wire was coated with a mixture of stearic acid and methyl-tri-n-octyl-ammonium stearate. When this coated electrode was immersed in aqueous phosphate solution, its potential was found to be a linear function of pH from pH 2 to 12 with a slope equal to the theoretical value of 59.0 mV per pH unit at 24°.

Keywords: glass electrode, pH

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1909

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Sandblom J., Eisenman G., Walker J. L., Jr Electrical phenomena associated with the transport of ions and ion pairs in liquid ion-exchange membranes. I. Zero current properties. J Phys Chem. 1967 Nov;71(12):3862–3870. doi: 10.1021/j100871a022. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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