I’ve been working over the holiday on trying to make Ag/AgCl electrodes. Here’s the method I’ve come up with so far:
1. 99.99% silver wire is used as the anode (+) and platinum as the cathod (-).
2. Silver wire is coated with chloride in a 1M HCl solution at a constant current of 10 mA for ~20 minutes.
3. Electrolysis is stopped after a brownish coat of AgCl is developed on the wire.
4. Wires are aged a few days in DI H2O. It’s important not to let the wire dry out.
This protocol was developed using Experiments in Physical Chemistry by Shoemaker, Garland, Steinfield, and Nibler (p694-695). Also I used some of the details from the Burns(Zydney) paper.
I’m not entirely sold that this is working perfectly yet. My coating of AgCl doesn’t seem all the consistent. I have tired using these wires in the electroosmotic cell, but they seem to be dying or just not having very high currents in the cell. Bubbles are minimal using these wires. I haven’t checked pH changes yet. This is all really new right now, and there will be more to come once I get more time to play with them.
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