Investigation of the model compounds at 4-aminobenzoic acid modified glassy carbon electrode by scanning electrochemical microscopy

In this paper, we studied the reactions of both potassium ferricyanide and hexaammineruthenium(III) chloride at a 4-aminobenzoic acid (4-ABA) modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) by scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) in different pH solutions. The surface of the modified electrode has carboxyl groups, the dissociation of which are strongly dependent upon the solution pH values. The rate constant kb of the oxidation of ferrocyanide on the modified electrode can be obtained by fitting the experimental tip current–distance (IT–d) curves with the theoretical values. The surface pKa of the 4-ABA modified GCE was estimated from the plot of standard rate constant k° versus the solution pH and is equal to 3.2, which is in good agreement with the reported result. The SECM approach curves for Ru(NH3)63+ both on the bare and the modified electrodes show similar diffusion control processes. These results can be explained by the electrostatic interactions between the modified electrode surface and the model compounds with different charges.