Electrochemical properties of two dimensional assemblies of insulating diamond particles

Charge transport across high surface area metal/diamond nanostructured composites

High surface area composites featuring metal nanostructures and diamond particles have generated a lot of interest in the fields of heterogeneous catalysis, electrocatalysis, and sensors. Diamond surfaces provide a chemically robust framework for active nanostructures in comparison with sp(2) carbon supports. The present paper investigates the charge transport properties of high surface area films of high-pressure, high-temperature diamond particles in the presence and absence of metal nanostructures, employing electrochemical field-effect transistors. Oxygen- and hydrogen-terminated surfaces were generated on 500 nm diamond powders. Homogeneously distributed metal nanostructures, with metal volume fractions between ca. 5 and 20%, were either nucleated at the diamond particles by impregnation or incorporated from colloidal solution. Electrochemical field-effect transistor measurements, employing interdigitated electrodes, allowed the determination of composite conductivity as a function of electrode potential, as well as in air. In the absence of metal nanostructures, the lateral conductivity of the diamond assemblies in air is increased by over one order of magnitude upon hydrogenation of the particle surface. This observation is consistent with studies at diamond single crystals, although the somewhat modest change in conductivity suggests that charge transport is not only determined by the intrinsic surface conductivity of individual diamond particles but also by particle-to-particle charge transfer. Interestingly, the latter contribution effectively controls the assembly conductivity in the presence of an electrolyte solution as the difference between hydrogenated and oxygenated particles vanishes. The conductivity in the presence of metal nanoparticles is mainly determined by the metal volume fraction, while diamond surface termination and the presence of electrolyte solutions exert only minor effects. The experimental trends are discussed in terms of the electrochemical formation of charge carriers in the diamond particles, percolation theory, and charge screening at the double layer.

Carbon-ring microelectrode arrays for electrochemical imaging of single cell exocytosis: fabrication and characterization

Fabrication of carbon microelectrode arrays, with up to 15 electrodes in total tips as small as 10-50 μm, is presented. The support structures of microelectrodes were obtained by pulling multiple quartz capillaries together to form hollow capillary arrays before carbon deposition. Carbon ring microelectrodes were deposited by pyrolysis of acetylene in the lumen of these quartz capillary arrays. Each carbon deposited array tip was filled with epoxy, followed by beveling of the tip of the array to form a deposited carbon-ring microelectrode array (CRMA). Both the number of the microelectrodes in the array and the tip size are independently tunable. These CRMAs have been characterized using scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and electrogenerated chemiluminescence. Additionally, the electrochemical properties were investigated with steady-state voltammetry. In order to demonstrate the utility of these fabricated microelectrodes in neurochemistry, CRMAs containing eight microring electrodes were used for electrochemical monitoring of exocytotic events from single PC12 cells. Subcellular temporal heterogeneities in exocytosis (i.e. cold spots vs hot spots) were successfully detected with the CRMAs.