Electrical cross-talk in rotating ring-disk experiments

The electrical cross-talk between the two working electrodes of generator/collector systems is investigated. Digital simulations are carried out to model simple collection experiments with a rotating ring-disk electrode (RRDE) immersed into a finite resistance solution of a redox couple, where electrical cross-talk may arise due to the shared current routes of the two working electrodes. Based on the analysis of the Kirchhoff (Laplace) matrix of the simulation mesh it is demonstrated that the cross-talk effect is heavily influenced by the selection of the reference point for potential measurements; in practice this is the position of the reference electrode or the tip of the Luggin probe. The devised model is validated by means of a simple and demonstrative experiment. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.