Electrode Electrode An electrode is an electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit (e.g. a semiconductor, an electrolyte, a vacuum or air). The word was coined by William Whewell at the request of the scientist Michael Faraday from two Greek words: "elektron", meaning amber (from which the word electricity is derived), and "hodos", a way. The electrophore, invented by Johan Wilcke, was an early version of an electrode used to study static electricity. An electrode in an electrochemical cell is referred to as either an "anode" or a "cathode" (words that were coined by William
Silver chloride electrode chloride is a popular choice of biological electrodes due to its low half-cell potential of approximately 220 mV and the lower of the impedance of the electrode by silver chloride. When appropriately constructed, the silver chloride electrode can be used up to 300 °C. The standard potential (i.e., the potential when the chloride activity is 1 mol/kg) of the silver chloride electrode is a function of temperature as follows: Bard et al. give the following correlations for the standard potential of the silver chloride electrode between 0 and 95°C as a function of temperature (where t is temperature in °C):