Nanostructured optically transparent carbon electrodes

TOMÁS E. BENAVIDEZ; CARLOS D. GARCIA

San Antonio, Texas

Conferencia; College of Sciences, Research Conference; 2013

The University of Texas at San Antonio

The present work describes the results related to the optical and electrochemical characterization of thin carbon films fabricated by spin coating and pyrolysis of AZ P4330-RS photoresist. The goal of this work is to provide comprehensive information allowing for the rational the selection of the conditions to fabricate optically-transparent carbon electrodes (OTCE) with specific electro-optical properties. According to our resultt these electrodes could be appropriate choices as electrochemical transducers. At the core of this work is the development and critical evaluation of a new optical model to calculate the thickness of the OTCE by variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry (VASE). Such data was complemented with topography and roughness (obtained by AFM), electrochemical properties (obtained by cyclic voltammetry), electricalproperties (obtained by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy), and structural composition (obtained by Raman spectroscopy). Although the described OTCE were used as substrates to investigate the effect of electrode potential on thereal-time adsorption of proteins by ellipsometry, these results could enable the development of biosensors that can be then integrated into different analytical platforms.