The benefit of a glassy carbon electrode is that it is very homogeneous surface, the same electrode can be used again and again with polishing, the material in a glassy carbon electrode is predominately  carbon. The downside with a glassy carbon electrode is that it is often not a practical electrode in products, particularly where the electrode is expected to be disposable/semi-disposable.  

Glassy carbon electrode is one of the widely used working electrodes. It is a better inert electrode with good conductivity, high hardness, high smoothness, high hydrogen overpotential, wide polarization range, stable chemical properties, and can be used as inert. The electrode is directly used for anodic stripping, voltammetry of the cathode and valence ions, and can also be used as a chemically modified electrode.

The advantages of glassy carbon electrode are good electrical conductivity, high chemical stability, small thermal expansion coefficient, hard texture, good air tightness, wide potential application range (about -1 ～ 1V, relative to saturated calomel electrode), can be made It can be formed into electrode shapes such as cylinders and disks, and it can also be used to make mercury film glassy carbon electrodes and chemically modified electrodes. It is widely used in electrochemical experiments or electroanalytical chemistry.

Because the glassy carbon electrode is an inert electrode, the scanning electrode used in the plating is the scanning electrode, such as mercury plating, copper, gold is the mercury film, copper film, and gold film electrode. For example: anode stripping mercury plating and gold plating, glassy carbon mercury plating has two types: the first is isotopic mercury plating, that is, adding a certain amount of Hg + (usually mercury oxide and mercury nitrate) to the sample to be analyzed and enriched by electrolysis. An amalgam is formed at the same time as the point of the ions. After scanning and dissolving, the ions or the mercury film are completely dissolved at a positive potential. You can also take out the electrode and wipe the mercury film with filter paper. Ensure that the electrode surface is still in the original state during the second analysis to ensure reproducibility. Generally, the concentration of mercury ions is 500-1000 times the measured ion concentration. The second type is a pre-plated mercury film. Electrodeposit mercury for a long period of time under the ion electrolytic potential. For example, the cu can be used to produce a mercury film at -0.2V for a long time, and the danger of cu, pb, cd, and zn can be prevented. This method has low efficiency and long time.  Under the condition of the same-position mercury plating, after a period of time of electrowinning, scan the dissolution, and then dissolve the general time at the termination potential to dissolve the test ions, so enrichment-dissolution, repeated several times to get a layer containing no Detect ionic mercury film.



Prev: Precautions for using the graphite electrode Next: What are graphite electrodes used for?