A Simple Method to Tune Up Screen-Printed Carbon Electrodes Applicable to the Design of Disposable Electrochemical Sensors

We report an easy method to tune up screen-printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs) for application in fabricating dis-posable electrochemical sensors. Simply by ultrasonic polishing a bare SPCE in a g-Al2O3 slurry, the surface rough-ness was drastically smoothed coupled with a large increase in hydrophilicity. The as-generated micromorphology on the surface of the SPCE was found to be ideal for the immobilization of catechol to minimize the overpotential in the sensitive detection of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and hydrazine. Physical characterization by both XPS and AFM studies specify that the adsorption behavior is related to the carbon surface functionalities and the trapping of g-Al2O3 on the polished-SPCE