Parallel Electroplating of Multiple Materials Using Patterned Gels for Electrochemical Sensing

Electrodeposition is a widely used method to fabricate electrodes in microscale electroanalytical devices. In this method, low cost materials such as copper are coated with higher cost but functional materials such as gold or silver. Conventional methods of electroplating, which use a sequential process of coating one material at a time, consumes a significant amount of time for deposition of multiple materials. In addition, they use a large volume of electrolytes which may be reasonable if large areas are coated but are wasteful and unnecessary for fabrication of small area microelectrodes. Here, we introduce a new method where gels are used to immobilize plating reagents close to the surface on which it is to be plated. We show that such gels could be patterned using spot printing and confined to some regions using xurographically patterned films attached to the surface. This method allows gel patterns containing different metal salts to be placed in different locations. Such patterned surfaces can then be dipped into a common working electrolyte and produce a complex multimaterial pattern of deposition in parallel.