Lithography-free interdigitated electrodes by trench-filling patterning on polymer substrate for Alzheimer's disease detection

Abstract

Microelectrodes have played a crucial role in electrochemistry for the last few decades. However, the conventional lithographic processes, the key players in fabrication, are nonetheless technologically challenging, pricey, and lack reproducibility. In this work has developed a novel and low-cost patterned-replication fabrication technology for interdigitated electrode array (IDA) electrodes on the polymer substrate. Conventional UV-lithography has been utilized to fabricate the nickel IDA electrode pattern as a master mold on the stainless-steel substrate, which was replicated onto the polymer substrate by the hot-emboss technique. Then, gold was deposited on the replicated wafer by electron beam evaporation, and finally adhesive tape lift-off was used to obtain the gold IDA electrode. The fabricated IDA electrode was applied for electrochemical detection of various p-aminophenol (PAP) concentrations as a representative biomarker with a detection limit of 0.01 nM. Finally, different levels of amyloid beta 42 (Aß42) and amyloid beta aggregated (Aß Agg.), two Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers, were measured using the developed IDA electrode via e-ELISA using enzyme by-products PAP. While quantified, the proposed IDA electrode successfully detects Aß42 and Aß Agg. with the lower detection limit (LOD) of 3.9 and 7.81 pg/ml, respectively.