Analytical Sciences

Hybrid Carbon Film Electrodes for Electroanalysis

Osamu NIWA,* Saki OHTA,* Shota TAKAHASHI,* Zixin ZHANG,* Tomoyuki KAMATA,** Dai KATO,** and Shunsuke SHIBA***

*Advanced Science Research Laboratory, Saitama Institute of Technology, 1690 Fusaiji, Fukaya, Saitama 369-0293, Japan
**Health and Medical Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8566, Japan
***Department of Materials Science and Biotechnology, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ehime University, 3-Bunkyo-cho, Matsuyama, Ehime 790-8577, Japan

Carbon materials have been widely used for electrochemical analysis and include carbon nanotubes, graphene, and boron-doped diamond electrodes in addition to conventional carbon electrodes, such as those made of glassy carbon and graphite. Of the carbon-based electrodes, carbon film has advantages because it can be fabricated reproducibly and micro- or nanofabricated into electrodes with a wide range of shapes and sizes. Here, we report two categories of hybrid-type carbon film electrodes for mainly electroanalytical applications. The first category consists of carbon films doped or surface terminated with other atoms such as nitrogen, oxygen and fluorine, which can control surface hydrophilicity and lipophilicity or electrocatalytic performance, and are used to detect various electroactive biochemicals. The second category comprises metal nanoparticles embedded in carbon film electrodes fabricated by co-sputtering, which exhibits high electrocatalytic activity for environmental and biological samples including toxic heavy metal ions and clinical sugar markers, which are difficult to detect at pure carbon-based electrodes.

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