Electrochemical Characterization of Carbon Films with Porous Microstructures

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Abstract
This paper describes the structural and electrochemical characterization of porous carbon thin film electrodes formed via a recently developed film fabrication technique called glancing angle deposition (GLAD). The technique involves physical vapor deposition of thin films onto unheated substrates oriented at highly oblique angles to the vapor flux. The fabricated GLAD carbon thin film (GTF) electrodes have controllable porosity and microstructure on the 10 nanometer scale. The GTF surface structure was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Electrochemical response of the GTF electrodes was investigated by cyclic voltammetry using several redox probes with known kinetic behavior on carbon surfaces. GTF electrodes were compared to the commonly used glassy carbon (GC) electrodes in order to evaluate their electrochemical performance. Overall, the GTF electrodes exhibited well-defined, peak shape voltammograms for all the redox systems investigated. The results presented demonstrate that GTF surfaces show higher faradaic and background currents than polished GC. This is attributed to the large exposed surface area (63 cm2/cm2) of the porous film. © 2003 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.