Deactivation of poly(o-aminophenol) film electrodes by storage without use in the supporting electrolyte solution and its comparison with other deactivation processes

• The storage of a poly(o-aminophenol) film without use for time periods longer than 32 h strongly reduces its electroactivity.
• The electron transport rate deceases with the increase of the degree of deactivation (θd).
• The redox sites distribution becomes more spread as θd increases.

The effect of storage time without use (STWU) in the supporting electrolyte solution on the conducting properties of poly(o-aminophenol) (POAP) film electrodes was studied. Cyclic voltammetry (CV), rotating disc electrode voltammetry (RDEV), and surface resistance (SR) were employed. The storage of a POAP film without use for time periods longer than 32 h strongly reduces its electroactivity. Here, this effect is called deactivation. The attenuation of the voltammetric response of the polymer film with the increase of the storage time allows one to define a degree of deactivation (θd). A decrease of the electron transport rate (De) with the increase of the degree of deactivation of POAP films was obtained from RDEV measurements. This effect was attributed to the increase of the mean distance between active redox sites in the bulk of the POAP film. The relative surface resistance change (ΔR/R) of a gold film coated with POAP is also attenuated by the increase of the STWU. The attenuation was attributed to interfacial (gold/POAP) redox site distributions where the nearest neighbor distance between redox sites gradually increases as the degree of deactivation increases. The deactivation of POAP films by the STWU studied in this work was compared with deactivations caused by other electrochemical and chemical treatments, such as prolonged potential cycling (PPC), high positive potential limits (HPPL) and soaking in a ferric ion solution (SFeIS), described in previous work.

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