Direct assessment of solid-liquid interface noise in ion sensing using a differential method

This letter presents a microelectrode cell dedicated to direct assessment of the solid-liquid interface noise without recourse to a reference electrode. In the present design, two identical TiN electrodes of various sizes are used for differential measurements in KCl-based electrolytes. Measured noise of the TiN|electrolyte system is found to be of thermal nature. Scaling inversely with electrode area, the noise is concluded to mainly arise from the solid-liquid interface. This noise is comparable to or larger than that of the state-of-the-art MOSFETs. Therefore, its influence cannot be overlooked for the design of future ion sensors.