Improvement of the inter-electrode reproducibility of screen-printed carbon electrodes by oxygen plasma etching and an image color level method for quality control

Screen-printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs) were selectively etched by oxygen plasma. The coefficient of variance (CV) of inter-electrode reproducibility was reduced from 21.6 to 4.6. Studies of the surface by color-level-indexing histogram analysis, scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and resistance revealed that the inter-electrode reproducibility correlated with complete etching of the resin binder from the SPCE surface. The quality of the electrode was differentiated by this color level index analysis. This technique has great potential for application in on-line quality control of the SPCE plasma-treating process when integrated with suitable image processing software.