Investigation on Electrochemically Cathodic Polarization of Boron-Doped Diamond Electrodes and Its Influence on Lead Ions Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to further understand the dependence of the electrochemical activity of a boron-doped diamond (BDD) film electrode on its surface boron doping concentration and the pretreatment applied to its surface. An electrochemically cathodic polarization (-3 V vs. SCE) with a varying polarization duration (5-50 min) was carried separately out to three types of BDDs with a boron doping level of 700, 2500, 8000 ppm in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and cyclic voltammetry (CV) were used to evaluate surface activity of the BDDs with and without cathodic polarizations by using 1.0 mM Fe(CN)(6)(3-/4-). Moreover, the surface activity of the polarized BDD electrodes was examined further by using anodic stripping voltammetry to detect a series of known concentrations of Pb2+. Our results indicated that the applied cathodic polarization significantly improved the surface activity of the as-received BDD, and exhibited more active effect on the surface of a higher boron doping level BDD compared to a lower boron doping level BDD, thereby improving the ability of the polarized BDDs to detect trace Pb(II) in aqueous solutions by anodic stripping voltammetry. (C) The Author(s) 2014. Published by ECS. All rights reserved.