Metal complexation by electroanalytical techniques : hard -and soft- modelling approaches

Resumen

Two general approaches are used to investigate metal complexation by electrochemical tools. The first one, hard-modelling, is based on the postulation of a theoretical physicochemical model for both the electrode reaction and complexation processes, and its further analytical or numerical resolution. Later, the fitting of the parameters of that model to the experimental data provides the information about metal complexation. The second approach, soft-modelling, involves the identification of a complexation model from the numerical and statistical analysis of data, without any previous assumption of a model. This approach has been extensively applied to spectroscopic data, but very rarely used with electrochemical results. In this article we deal with the formulation of a model (hard-modelling) for metal complexation in mixed-ligand systems, including macromolecular ligands, and with the application of the soft-modelling technique designated Multivariate Curve Resolution by Alternating Least Squares to several systems of biological and environmental interest.