Electrochemical Investigation of Polylactic Acid/Carbon Black Composite Filament for the Manufacture of 3D Printed Electrodes

Fused deposition modeling 3D printing has recently attracted increasing attention as an inexpensive, fast, reliable, adaptable and environmentally friendly tool to fabricate electrodes and electrochemical cells from composites of thermoplastics and carbon nonstructures. In this work, we use electric conductance measurements and cyclic voltammetry employing Ru(acac)0/1-3 as an electroactive probe to demonstrate that commercial polylactic acid(PLA)/carbon black composite filaments may be readily used as functional working electrodes in aqueous electrolytes. We further devise a procedure that leads to an improvement of their electrochemical performance. Characteristics of composite filaments treated by the optimized procedure approach those of classical metallic electrodes.