An yttria-stabilized-zirconia-(YSZ)-membrane metal-oxide (M/O) electrode was used as a reference electrode to measure the corrosion potential of the material used to build the structures of reactors. The electrode can operate at high temperatures because of the conductivity of YSZ membrane tube. It also has a braze juncture between the YSZ membrane and metal tubes which may corrode in high-temperature water. They should be prevented to improve the performance of the M/O electrode. We developed an integrated Ni/NiO electrode (i.e. integrated metal-oxide electrode IMOE) to eliminate the braze juncture and increase the conductivity of YSZ and evaluated its performance. The sputter-deposited thin films of the IMOE detached from the boundary between the Ni substrate and the NiO film in a buffer solution (pH 7) at room temperature. We then used thermal oxidation to deposit a durable nickel-oxide film onto a Ni substrate in order to produce an improved IMOE. A multilayered improved IMOE structure lasted up to 1100 h during an immersion test. The potential of the improved IMOE is stabler than that of the former IMOE and has a drift of 0.01–0.1 mV/h. The improved IMOE also exhibited a pH response in buffer solutions (pH 4.02–9.26) at room temperature. The pH response has a slope of ?56.9 mV/pH which is 4% smaller than the ideal pH response (?59 mV/pH). Thermal oxidation was effective at improving the durability and pH response of the IMOE at room temperature.