Sustainable air plasma regeneration of screen-printed gold electrodes with enhanced electroactive surface area and biosensing performance

Miniaturized electroanalytical devices paired with screen-printed electrodes (SPE) are gaining popularity due to their compact design and minimal analyte requirements. However, their single-use nature and non-degradable polymer substrates with printed precious metals like gold limit their sustainability as biosensing interfaces.

Disposing of each electrode after a single use is neither cost-effective nor sustainable. Herein, a green air plasma cleaning technique is introduced to regenerate multiple gold SPEs simultaneously within 10 minutes. Air plasma treatment resulted in surface hydrophilicity, significant reduction in surface nitrogen analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, near-zero charge transfer resistance with a simplified equivalent circuit only limiting charge transfer processes by redox mass diffusion characterized by Warburg impedance.