Micrux Sensors with Organic Solvents


 

At Zimmer and Peacock we had an enquiry whether Micrux Sensors were compatible with ethanol and acetonitrile.  At Zimmer and Peacock we are happy to support our customers and clients in their sensor applications so we prepared this page and video in response.

 

'... I just tested the Micrux gold with ethanol and it's not coming g off, I  very strongly know/suspect that acetonitrile is also not going to take the gold off.  

 

What will lead to corrosion of the gold is if you run the electrodes above 0.5 V vs Ag/AgCl/0.15MCl in aqueous solutions , then you will start to see a stripping peak if you do a CV, if you run a cyclic voltammogram fairly fast  (approx 50 mV) I suspect that you will see a stripping peak and then on the reverse scan a re-plating peak.

 

 

With these types of sputtered electrodes if you try to run high currents and/or high voltages through them then you can get delamination of the electrode away from the glass, this is because you are putting so much power into the electrodes that these little pieces of metal won't be able to dissipate the power.

 

I think you are intending to to EIS type experiments at +/- 50 mV excitation around OCP so there the electrodes will be perfectly fine.

 

So in summary your original question was will the gold be compatible with ethanol and acetonitrile, the answer is I have just tested with ethanol and it was as I expected it was fine. I also think it will be fine with acetonitrile, but if you apply largish voltages to these electrodes you will oxidise gold and start to dissolve your electrode, as long as you are doing 'classic' EIS experiments then you won’t get this problem...'