Reproducibly Defining Electrode Area of Carbon Paper Electrodes via Machine Cutting and High-Throughput Waxing

Abstract

Carbon paper is one of the most common carbon electrode materials employed in electrochemical research due to its low cost, disposability, and controllable dimensions and scaling. Carbon paper is usually hand cut and a variety of strategies are used to define electrode area. This procedure is tedious, imprecise, and inaccurate, yielding coefficients of variation in peak current output as high as 20%. Imprecision in hand-preparation translates directly to poor reproducibility in electrochemical data leading to challenges in directly comparing data across research groups and research fields. This work introduces an inexpensive and precise method to automatically cut and rapidly wax carbon paper electrodes, circumventing laborious traditional preparation and substantially improving precision in electrochemical data.