Abstract
The use of electrochemical sensors for the analysis of biological samples is nowadays widespread and highly demanded from diagnostic and pharmaceutical research, but the reliability and repeatability still remain debated issues. In the expanding field of printed electronics, Aerosol Jet Printing (AJP) appears promising to bring an improvement in resolution, miniaturization, and flexibility. In this paper, the use of AJP is proposed to design and fabricate customized electrochemical sensors in term of geometry, materials and 3D liquid sample confinement, reducing variability in the functionalization process. After an analysis of geometrical, electrical and surface features, the optimal layout has been selected. An electrochemical test has been then performed quantifying Interleukin-8, selected as reference protein, by means of Anodic Stripping Voltammetry. AJP sensors have been compared with standard screen-printed electrodes in terms of current density and relative standard deviation. Results from AJP sensors with Ag-based Anodic Stripping Voltammetry confirmed nanostructures capability to reduce the limit of detection (from 2.1 to 0.3 ng/mL). Furthermore, AJP appeared to bring an improvement in term of relative standard deviation from 50 to 10%, if compared to screen-printed sensors. This is promising to improve reliability and repeatability of measurement techniques integrable in several biotechnological applications.
Highlights
Printed electronics have been increasingly investigated as convenient and promising for providing reliable feedbacks on biological samples or physiological processes, in applications ranging from diagnostics, pharmaceutics to tissue engineering
Results from Aerosol Jet Printing (AJP) sensors with Ag-based Anodic Stripping Voltammetry confirmed nanostructures capability to reduce the limit of detection
AJP appeared to bring an improvement in term of relative standard deviation from 50 to 10%, if compared to screen-printed sensors
Summary
Printed electronics have been increasingly investigated as convenient and promising for providing reliable feedbacks on biological samples or physiological processes, in applications ranging from diagnostics, pharmaceutics to tissue engineering. The recent attention for disposable, low-cost and reliable biomolecule-to-chip interface systems for high-throughput in-vitro assays is becoming an urgent need due to novel international regulatory guidelines [1]. Nowadays the techniques adopted most frequently for these applications are screen printing (SP) and ink-jet printing (IJP). They both allow achieving resolution up to 50–100 μm, required to provide proper geometrical properties electrochemical sensors for a wide range of biotechnological applications such as chemicals detection, DNA or protein recognition [2,3]. Regarding the area of biotechnological applications, the most used and accepted design is the one commercially available produced by companies such as Dropsens or Metrohm, which provide a very wide variety of different materials or designs, manageable and applicable to different areas of biotechnological research [5]
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