Electrochemical sensors for oral biofilm–biomaterials interface characterization: A review

Abstract

Important processes related to the interaction of the oral microbiome with the tooth surface happen directly at the interface. For example, the chemical microenvironment that exists at the interface of microbial biofilms and the native tooth structure is directly involved in caries development. Consequentially, a critical understanding of this interface and its chemical microenvironment would provide novel avenues in caries prevention, including secondary caries that often occurs at the interface of the dental biofilm, tooth structure, and dental material. Electrochemical sensors are a unique quantitative tool and have the inherent advantages of miniaturization, stability, and selectivity. That makes the electrochemical sensors ideal tools for studying these critical biofilm microenvironments with high precision. This review highlights the development and applications of several novel electrochemical sensors such as pH, Ca 2+ , and hydrogen peroxide sensors as scanning electrochemical microscope probes in addition to flexible pH wire sensors for real-time bacterial biofilm-dental surface and dental materials interface studies. K E Y W O R D Sbiofilm, glass ionomer, oral microbiology (molecular) INTRODUCTIONElectrochemical sensors can be used to conduct research on various aspects of oral microbiology and dental materials. For instance, they can determine the amount of microbes in a sample, the pH, the amount of oxygen, and the amount of metals. In addition, they can be used to track the progress of dental materials research toward the development of more efficient anticaries properties.

Characterization and morphological methods for oral biofilm visualization: where are we nowadays?

“…The main electrochemical sensors are Ca 2+ and hydrogen peroxide, and they are used as probes applied to the scanning electrochemical microscope. The advantage of this method is to obtain the revelation of real-time interaction between the bacterial biofilm and the dental surface [65] . Regarding hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ), its application to the microscopic method is crucial due to its wide presence in many cellular processes as a metabolite.…”