Disposable Gold Electrodes with Reproducible Area Using Recordable CDs and Toner Masks

The fabrication and characterization of very cheap disposable gold disk electrodes with reproducible area is reported. The innovation of the proposed procedure is the use of toner masks to define reproducible areas on uniform gold surfaces obtained from recordable compact disks (CD‐R). Toner masks are drawn in a laser printer and heat transferred to gold surfaces, defining exactly the electrodes area. The electrochemical behavior of these disposable electrodes was investigated by cyclic voltammetry in Fe(CN)₆^4? solutions. The relative standard deviation for signals obtained from 10 different gold electrodes was below 1 %. The size of the disk electrodes can be easily controlled, as attested by voltammetric responses recorded by using electrodes with radii varying from 0.5 to 3.0 mm. The advantages of using this kind of electrode for analytical measurements of substances that strongly adsorb on the electrode surface such as cysteine are also addressed.