Sensitivity improvement of a miniaturized label-free electrochemical impedance biosensor by electrode edge effect

摘要

Point-of-care (PoC) biosensors continue to gain popularity because of the desire to improve cost performance in today's health care industry. As cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains one of the top three leading causes of death in Asia, a tool that can help to detect CVDs is highly sought after. We present a high-sensitivity PoC biosensor that can be used to detect CVD biomarkers. To meet the requirements of a PoC biosensor, we adopted electrochemical methods as the basis of the detection. A more stable three-electrode configuration was miniaturized and put onto a biochip. To improve the detection sensitivity associated with the reduced size in the biochip, computer simulation was used to investigate several potential effective possibilities. We found that the electrolyte current density on the edge near the working electrode (WE) and counter electrode (CE) was higher. This was verified using an atomic force microscope to measure the surface potential. We then experimented with the configuration by lengthening the edge of the WE and CE without changing the area of the WE and CE and maintained the gap between the two electrodes. We found improved measurement efficiency with our newly developed biochip.