Screen-printed electrochemical sensing platforms, due to their scales of economy and high reproducibility, can provide a useful approach to translate laboratory-based electrochemistry into the field. An important factor when utilising screen-printed electrodes (SPEs) is the determination of their real electrochemical surface area, which allows for the benchmarking of these SPEs and is an important parameter in quality control. In this paper, we consider the use of cyclic voltammetry and chronocoulometry to allow for the determination of the real electrochemical area of screen-printed electrochemical sensing platforms, highlighting to experimentalists the various parameters that need to be diligently considered and controlled in order to obtain useful measurements of the real electroactive area.
Keywords: Anson plot; Randles–Ševćik; chronocoulometry; cyclic voltammetry; real electroactive area; screen-printed electrodes.