Paper-based bipolar electrode-electrochemiluminescence (BPE-ECL) device with battery energy supply and smartphone read-out: A handheld ECL system for biochemical analysis at the point-of-care level

Abstract

In this work, a handheld paper-based bipolar electrode-electrochemiluminescence (P-BPE-ECL) system has been proposed. In this system, a rechargeable battery is used for power supply, while a smartphone is applied for read-out of ECL signal. For the P-BPE-ECL, the carbon ink-based BPE and driving electrodes are screen-printed on the paper, and the wax-screen-printing is employed to fabricate microfluidic channels on electrode-patterned paper. Moreover, the luminol/H2O2-based ECL reaction is applied to demonstrate the quantitative ability of the P-BPE-ECL system. Under optimized conditions, H2O2 can be determined over the range of 5–5000μM, with a detection limit of 1.75μM, and relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 7.59%, 3.82% and 4.93% for 10, 100 and 1000μM H2O2 (n=5). Thus, this system has an acceptable sensitivity, dynamic range, stability and reproducibility. Finally, the applicability of the P-BPE-ECL system is demonstrated for detection of glucose in phosphate buffer solution (PBS) and artificial urine (AU) samples, with the detection limits of 0.017mM and 0.030mM, respectively. Moreover, the P-BPE-ECL system has the ability to perform high-throughput detection of glucose. Therefore, the developed system can provide a new platform for many applications such as point-of-care testing, health diagnosis and environmental monitoring.