Development of a carbon microchannel integrated with a horizontal carbon sandwich electrode pair for ultra sensitive electrochemical/bio sensors

Abstract

In this paper, we present carbon sandwich electrode pair as ultrasensitive electrochemical/bio sensors. We introduce simple, easy and low cost batch fabrication method, which is called carbon MEMS. Carbon MEMS process easily converts microstructures to nanostructures using only conventional photolithography and pyrolysis process. The carbon sandwich electrode pair consists of an on-plane electrode and a suspended nanomesh electrode. As electrochemical sensors, redox current amplification was measured with the carbon sandwich electrode pair. The feasibility of the carbon sandwich electrode pairs as highly sensitive electrochemical sensor platforms was demonstrated by measuring current values from the electrode pairs integrated in a pre-defined microchannel. The maximum current signal amplification factor of 89 was achieved by the carbon sandwich electrode pair integrated in a PDMS microchannel of 10 μm channel height. Furthermore, we studied the effect of the aspect ratio of the suspended carbon electrode on the amplification factors.