Preparing Your Phosphate Buffer
How do you prepare your phosphate buffer? Here's how:
What You'll Need
Monosodium phosphate, monohydrate and its conjugate base disodium phosphate, heptahydrate
Water
Phosphoric acid (to make the buffer more acidic) or sodium hydroxide (to make the solution more basic)
pH meter, glassware and hot plate with stirring bar
Procedure:
Decide on the properties of your buffer. Before doing anything, you need to decide on the molarity and pH of your buffer. Remember, most buffers are used at a concentration between 0.1 M and 10 M and the pH should ideally be within 1 pH unit of the acid or its conjugate base.
Prepare the solution. Using the calculated ratioderived from the equation, mix the required amounts of acid and base and mix them in approximately one liter of water to prepare a rough buffer solution.
Check the pH. Use your pH meter and adjust the pH accordingly by using phosphoric acid or sodium hydroxide. Bring the total volume to one liter once you have reached the desired pH.
Dilute as necessary. Use this stock solution to prepare buffers of different molarities as needed.