Abstract

Carbon pastes were applied in fabricating screen-printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs) for versatile electrochemical analyses. The electrochemical behaviour of the homemade system, consists of a working electrode, a counter electrode and a reference electrode, was investigated by the cyclic voltammetry (CV) of ferricyanide at a low concentration. The homemade SPCEs gave standard CV characteristics with sensitive electrochemical behaviours. Due to the surface roughness, the cathodic and anodic current peaks (I<inf>pc</inf> and I<inf>pa</inf> ) of the homemade SPCEs were significantly higher than those of commercial DropSens 110 SPCEs at a 90 % confidence level (P value 0.1). However, the reproducibility of homemade SPCEs (n=3) by manual pasting was lower than commercial DropSens 110. The novelty in making electrodes on a polyester substrate by using carbon pastes substantially reduces the production cost. The materials and process used for these homemade SPCEs show potential for a variety of electrochemical sensors.