Authors:

Emily Hennigan

Date Created:

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About Paper:

Square-wave voltammetry (SWV) is one of the most sensitive electrochemical techniques, which makes it very popular for the detection of redox analytes in solution or adsorbed onto an electrode. Yet, in the latter case, there is no simple analytical relation between the current recorded in SWV and the amount of adsorbed redox analyte. This is why, despite the extreme sensitivity of SWV, another less sensitive technique, cyclic voltammetry, is still broadly used for estimation of analyte coverage. The purpose of this project is to develop a simple methodology to determine the coverage of adsorbate by SWV. To do so, we first created an experimental system that will be used to test our methodology. This experimental system consists of a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of 11-(ferrocenyl)undecanethiol on gold electrodes. We characterized this redox-active SAM by cyclic voltammetry, a gold standard technique. We evidenced an ideal Nernstian behavior. Combining careful independent measurements of the electrochemically active surface area (ECSA), we are able to report the surface coverage of redox molecules on our gold electrodes. Finally, additional measurements were performed by SWV on the same SAMs. We are now working on the establishment of a numerical model (by Finite Element Modeling) to analyze the shape of the SWV and correlate that shape to the surface coverage found in CV.

Source:

Loyola University Chicago

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Co-authors:

Emily Hennigan