Large scale inkjet-printing of carbon nanotubes electrodes for antioxidant assays in blood bags

Abstract

a b s t r a c tHerein, we present the large scale fabrication of carbon nanotubes (CNT) electrodes supported on flexible polymeric sheets by subsequent multilayer inkjet printing of a silver layer for electrical connection, CNT layers as active electrode material and an insulation layer to define a stand-alone CNT active electrode area with high accuracy. Optical and electrochemical characterization using several redox mediators demonstrates the reproducibility of the electrode surfaces and their functionality even with a single inkjet printed CNT layer. These electrodes are targeted to the clinical sector for the determination of the antioxidant power (AOP) of biologically relevant fluids by pseudo-titration voltammetry. As a proof-ofconcept, the AOP of ascorbic acid solutions and biological samples such as erythrocyte concentrates (ECs) from different blood donors were determined demonstrating the potential use of the presented CNT sensors on ECs for blood transfusion purposes and the clinical sector.

Flexible, Transparent and Thin Films of Carbon Nanomaterials as Electrodes for Electrochemical Applications

“…However, in spite of the high conductivity experimented along individual carbon nanotubes or individual graphene sheets, the conductivity in the films is governed by the high contact resistance between the tubes, or between the graphene sheets: tube-tube (or graphene-graphene) junctions are high resistive [21]. A lot of efforts have already been put into fabrication of ITO-free devices and flexible/stretchable transparent electrodes based on CNTs and graphene [1,8,22,23], many of them 5 being successfully applied in photovoltaic devices [11,24], LEDs [25], capacitors [26] or electrochemical sensors [27][28][29]. The usual sheet resistances for these kinds of devices can range from 12×10 3 to 30  with transmittances up to 90 %, depending on both the nature of the carbonaceous nanostructure and processing method [1].…”

Inkjet-printed microtiter plates for portable electrochemical immunoassays

“…As discussed previously, such behaviour could be explained by an IR drop along the CNT electrode, kinetic limitations and non-linear diffusion effects due to microscopic inhomogeneities [29]. The later could be seen by the peak potential separation which exceeds the theoretical value of 59 mV for a fast one-electron transfer by~15 mV.…”

“…Recently, inkjet printing has become an attractive alternative for microfabrication. It is an additive manufacturing technique that enables the mask-and contact-less deposition of a variety of functional materials, such as metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, organometallic compounds, conductive polymers, carbonaceous materials, protein microarrays and living cells with high accuracy and micrometer resolution using picoliter droplets [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. The advantages of IJP include low ink waste, easily changeable layouts and the possibility of multi material deposition to create material gradients and multi-layer devices [36][37][38].…”

“…CNTs are attractive functional materials for sensing platforms due to several advantageous CNT properties, such as good electrical conductivity, chemical and mechanical stability, high flexibility, electrocatalytic activity and reduced surface fouling characteristics for specific applications [51][52][53][54]. Recently, we introduced the large-scale production of inkjetprinted CNT electrodes and their application as amperometric sensors for the detection of antioxidants in blood bags and beverages with matrix independent sensing capabilities after functionalization with an inkjet-printed hydrogel [29,31,55].…”

Inkjet Printing Meets Electrochemical Energy Conversion

“…For instance, inkjet printing is used to produce with high accuracy and reproducibility batches of amperometric antioxidant sensors based on carbon nanotubes and nano-hydrogels. [43,44] Micro-3D-patterns and test samples for scanning electrochemical microscopy and electrostatic spray ionization massspectrometry imaging have been prepared as well. [45,46] Furthermore, inkjet printing has been employed in LEPA to create CLs and MEAs for PEMFCs.…”