Screen Printed Thick Film Reference Electrodes for Electrochemical Sensing

Manjakkal, Libu; Vilouras, Anastasios; Dahiya, Ravinder

Abstract

This paper presents printed thick film Ag|AgCl|KCl reference electrodes (RE) for electrochemical sensors. The screenprinted REs with 10-μm thick glass-KCl salt matrix layer exhibit a stable potential of 5 mV. Cyclic voltammetric analysis shows that the anodic and cathodic peak current of the RE increases with the scan rate in the range of 25-150 mVs -1 . The analytical performance of the REs shows a stable open circuit potential for the NaCl concentrations in the range of 30-100 mM. Testing the presented REs for electrochemical pH sensor application (with RuO 2 -based sensitive electrode) the sensitivity of 55 mV/pH was noted in the pH range of 4.5-9. Evaluating the effect of temperature on the performance of REs, a potential variation of -3.8 mV/ °C was observed. Finally, a LabVIEW interface was developed to store, analyze, and calculate the sensitivity of the sensor under different temperature conditions. The LabVIEW interface can also be used to calculate the pH-value/temperature of unknown solutions under known temperature/pH conditions.

Citation

Manjakkal, L., Vilouras, A., & Dahiya, R. (2018). Screen Printed Thick Film Reference Electrodes for Electrochemical Sensing. IEEE Sensors Journal, 18(19), 7779-7785. https://doi.org/10.1109/jsen.2018.2840349

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 16, 2018
• Online Publication Date: May 28, 2018
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jul 19, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 20, 2022
• Journal: IEEE Sensors Journal
• Print ISSN: 1530-437X
• Electronic ISSN: 1558-1748
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 19
• Pages: 7779-7785
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/jsen.2018.2840349
• Keywords: Reference electrodes, pH sensor, thick film sensors, electrochemical studies, screen printing
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2890703