Large-scale fabrication of flexible solid-state reference electrodes

A new approach for large-scale fabrication of miniaturized, reliable and planar solid-state reference electrodes on flexible substrates is presented. Inkjet printing technique was used for the fabrication of conductive path and silver patterns that were chemically transformed into the Ag/AgCl electrodes and drop-casted with a membrane containing a UV-curable polyacrylate ink, KCl and tetradodecylammonium tetrakis(4-chlorophenyl)borate. The resulting solid-state reference electrodes (SSRE) showed excellent reproducibility and insensitivity to changes in the electrolyte composition and concentration (10−6 to 10−1 M), pH (3–11), the redox environment and the presence of oxygen and surfactants. The methodology offers a simple, low-cost alternative for large-scale fabrication of flexible potentiometric sensors with SSRE being easily incorporated into the sensor architecture.