Enhanced electrochemical performance at screen-printed carbon electrodes by a new pretreating procedure

A new method for the pretreatment of screen-printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs) by two successive steps was proposed. In step one, fresh SPCEs were soaked into NaOH with high concentration (e.g. 3 M) for tens to hundreds of minutes, and the resulted electrodes were called as SPCE-I. In step two, SPCE-I were pre-anodized in low concentration of NaOH, which were designated as SPCE-II. The pretreated electrodes showed remarkable enhancement in heterogeneous electron transfer rate constant (k0) increased from 1.6 × 10−4 cm s−1 at the fresh SPCE to 1.1 × 10−2 cm s−1 at SPCE-I for Fe(CN)63−/4− couple. The peak to peak separation (ΔEp) in cyclic voltammetry was reduced from ca. 480 to 84 mV, indicating that the electrochemical reversibility was greatly promoted, possibly due to the removing of polymers/oil binder from the electrode surfaces. The electroactive area (Aea) of the electrode was increased by a factor of 17 after pretreatment in step one. Further analysis by the electrochemical impedance method showed that the electron transfer resistance (Rct) decreased from ca. 2100 to 1.4 Ω. These pretreated electrodes, especially SPCE-II, exhibited excellent electrocatalytic behavior for the redox of dopamine (DA). Interference from ascorbic acid (AA) in the detection of DA at SPCE-II could be effectively eliminated due to the anodic peak separation (190 mV) between DA and AA, which resulted from the functionalization of the electrode surface in the pretreatment of step two. Under optimum conditions, current responses to DA were linearly changed in two concentration intervals, one was from 3.0 × 10−7 to 9.8 × 10−6 M, and the other was from 9.8 × 10−6 to 3.3 × 10−4 M. The detection limit for DA was down to 1.0 × 10−7 M.