title: Fabrication of metal nanoelectrodes by interfacial reactions.
abstract: Despite great improvements in the past decades, the controllable fabrication of metal nanoelectrodes still remains very challenging. In this work, a simple and general way to fabricate metal nanoelectrodes (Ag, Au, and Pt) is developed. On the basis of interfacial reactions at nano-liquid/liquid interfaces supported at nanopipettes, the nanoparticles can be formed in situ and have been used to block the orifices of pipettes to make nanoelectrodes. The effect of the driving force for interfacial reaction at the liquid/liquid interface, the ratio of redox species in organic and aqueous phases, and the surface charge of the inner wall of a pipette have been studied. The fabricated nanoelectrodes have been characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electrochemical techniques. A silver electrode with about 10 nm in radius has been employed as the scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) probe to explore the thickness of a water/nitrobenzene (W/NB) interface, and this value is equal to 0.8 ± 0.1 nm (n = 5). This method of fabrication of nanoelectrodes can be extended to other metal or semiconductor electrodes.
authors: College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University , Beijing 100871, China.
authors: Xinyu
authors: X
authors: Zhu
authors: Yonghui
authors: Y
authors: Qiao
authors: Xin
authors: X
authors: Zhang
authors: Sensen
authors: S
authors: Zhang
authors: Xiaohong
authors: X
authors: Yin
authors: Jing
authors: J
authors: Gu
authors: Ye
authors: Y
authors: Chen
authors: Zhiwei
authors: Z
authors: Zhu
authors: Meixian
authors: M
authors: Li
authors: Yuanhua
authors: Y
authors: Shao