Screen printed electrodes provide micro-domain sites for fabricating disposable electro-catalytic ensembles

We demonstrate that bespoke screen printed electrodes which are basal plane-like in nature can be used as a template to produce randomly dispersed electro-catalytic micro-domains for analytical sensing purposes. Proof-of-concept is shown for the case of copper ensembles for nitrate detection and palladium ensembles for hydrazine sensing. The advantageous disposable nature of the ensemble precludes the need of pre-treatment between measurements. The screen printed ensembles act as excellent substrates for the deposition of a range of metals allowing the screen printed electrodes to act as a template for micro-domain ensembles of many different electrode materials for a variety of analytical challenges. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.