Design and Characterization of Effective Ag, Pt and AgPt Nanoparticles to H(2)O(2) Electrosensing from Scrapped Printed Electrodes

The use of disposable screen-printed electrodes (SPEs) has extraordinarily grown in the last years. In this paper, conductive inks from scrapped SPEs were removed by acid leaching, providing high value feedstocks suitable for the electrochemical deposition of Ag, Pt and Ag core-Pt shell-like bimetallic (AgPt) nanoparticles, onto screen-printed carbon electrodes (M(L)@SPCEs, M = Ag, Pt or AgPt, L = metal nanoparticles from leaching solutions). M(L)@SPCEs were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The results were compared to those obtained when metal nanoparticles were synthesised using standard solutions of metal salts (M(S)@SPCEs). Both M(L)@SPCEs and M(S)@SPCEs exhibited similar cyclic voltammetric patterns referred to the electrochemical stripping of silver or the adsorption/desorption of hydrogen/anions in the case of platinum, proving leaching solutions extremely effective for the electrodeposition of metallic nanoparticles. The use of both M(L)@SPCEs and M(S)@SPCEs proved effective in enhancing the sensitivity for the detection of H(2)O(2) in phosphate buffer solutions (pH = 7). The AgPt(L)@SPCE was used as proof of concept for the validation of an amperometric sensor for the determination of H(2)O(2) within laundry boosters and antiseptic samples. The electrochemical sensor gave good agreement with the results obtained by a spectrophotometric method with H(2)O(2) recoveries between 100.6% and 106.4%.