Connectivity, electroactive composite

By convention, in electroactive composites, the first number refers to the active phase and the second to the inactive phase. The connectivity patterns for more than two phases are basically similar to the diphasic patterns, but are far more numerous. For n phases, the number of connectivity patterns is (n + 3) /3 n , producing 20 three-phase and 35 four-phase patterns. 

In the simplest case, analyte is an electroactive species that is part of a galvanic cell. An electroactive species is one that can donate or accept electrons at an electrode. We turn the unknown solution into a half-cell by inserting an electrode, such as a Pt wire, that can transfer electrons to or from the analyte. Because this electrode responds to analyte, it is called the indicator electrode. We then connect this half-cell to a second half-cell by a salt bridge. The second half-cell has a fixed composition, so it has a constant potential. Because of its constant potential, the second half-cell is called a reference electrode. The cell voltage is the difference between the variable potential of the analyte half-cell and the constant potential of the reference electrode. 

The enhancement of specific capacitance for carbon materials is generally realized by the usage of pseudocapacitance effects, which depend on the surface functionality of carbon and on the presence of electro-active species (termed supercapacitors) [162-164]. Several modifications (i.e., oxidation of carbon for increasing the surface functionality, formation of carbon/conducting polymers composites or insertion of electroactive particles of transition metals) can be carried out to increase the pseudocapacitance that arises fi om faradaic reactions. However, the enhancement of the capacitance connected with faradaic reactions of surface groups often contributes to an increase in the self-discharge of the capacitor due to the instability of the functionalities [165]. 

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