Disposable chemical sensors are now indispensable tools for monitoring the health of the individuals. In the case of electrode-based disposable sensors, screen-printing is a widely used fabrication method whereby simple, fast, and cost beneficial production is possible. However, it requires a patterned screen often requires special equipments. Therefore, it is inconvenient to use it in the development stage, especially in laboratory scale. Here, we introduce different electrode-preparing process based on the "Line Patterning Method" (LPM) for chemical sensors. The LPM, originally invented by the group of MacDiarmid, is a method to prepare a patterned layer of conducting polymer on an overhead-transparency film. The patterning process of this method is based on the laser printing, and a polymer pattern is obtained by removing the polymer together with the underlying toner from the film surface that is coated by the polymer in advance. The crucial point of this method is that the printer toner dissolves in an organic solvent but the conductive polymer does not. We fabricated various metal electrodes on an overhead-transparency film by e-beam vapor deposition. In the case of chemical sensors, noble metal electrodes such as Pt, Ag, and Au play important roles. For example, Pt is used as a counter electrode, and Ag as a reference electrode. Au is often used for biosensors because it can tightly immobilize biomaterials via a mercaptide group. We customized the LPM to fabricate these electrodes on a transparency film. To show the usefulness of such electrodes, we made several sensors such as a glucose sensor.
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