Photolithographically fabricated microelectrodes with interacting diffusion layers: fundamentals and basic applications

Abstract

This book chapter describes photolithographically fabricated microelectrodes and their arrays as very perspective tool in contemporary electrochemistry. Photolithographic thin layer technology allows to fabricate an array of sensors of micrometric dimension separated with a very small gap. This fact enables an overlapping of diffusion layers of single microelectrodes as members of the array. Various basic types of microelectrode arrays with interacting diffusion layers are described and their analytical abilities are accented. Theoretical approaches of diffusion layer overlapping and consequences of close constitution effects such as collection efficiency and redox cycling are discussed. Examples of basis applications in electroanalytical chemistry such as amperometric detectors in HPLC and substitutional stripping voltammetry are also given.