High Capacity Nanocomposite Layers Based on Nanoparticles of Carbon Materials and Ruthenium Dioxide for Potassium Sensitive Electrode

Abstract

This work presents the new concept of designing ion-selective electrodes based on the use of new composite materials consisting of carbon nanomaterials and ruthenium dioxide. Using two different materials varying in microstructure and properties, we could obtain one material for the mediation layer that adopted features coming of both components. Ruthenium dioxide characterized by high electrical capacity and mixed electronic-ionic transduction and nano-metric carbon materials were reportedly proved to improve the properties of ion-selective electrodes. Initially, only the materials and then the final electrodes were tested in the scope of the presented work, using scanning and transmission electron microscope, contact angle microscope, and various electrochemical techniques, including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and chronopotentiometry. The obtained results confirmed beneficial influence of the designed nanocomposites on the ion-selective electrodes’ properties. Nanosized structure, high capacity (characterized by the electrical capacitance value from approximately 5.5 mF for GR + RuO2 and CB + RuO2, up to 14 mF for NT + RuO2) and low hydrophilicity (represented by the contact angle from 60° for GR+RuO2, 80° for CB+RuO2, and up to 100° for NT + RuO2) of the mediation layer materials, allowed us to obtain water layer-free potassium-selective electrodes, characterized by rapid and stable potentiometric response in a wide range of concentrations-from 10−1 to 10−6 M K+.