Miniaturized electrodes with high surface area are key components of devices used for point-of-care sensing, wearable electronics and lab-on-a-chip applications. Over the last decade, the deposition of gold films onto pre-stressed polystyrene films, followed by thermal shrinking has been shown as a simple benchtop approach to fabricate microstructured electrodes (MSEs) with high electroactive surface area. Nevertheless, the high material and instrument cost associated with the deposition of the metallic films through evaporation or sputtering remains a key barrier that limits their use in resource limited settings. In this presentation, we introduce a simple and cost-effective methodology for the solution-based plating of high-quality copper, silver and gold metal films on prestressed polystyrene, which could be used to fabricate MSEs. The electroactive surface area of gold electrodes produced though the solution-based method is 2× and 12× larger than that of microstructured and planar electrodes produced through sputtering, and their cost is only 20% to that of the sputtered ones. The developed methodology allows the fabrication of on-chip microstructured electrochemical cells (SMECs) with excellent analytical performance (3% RSD inter-day reproducibility and 0.3% RSD repeatability), superior to that of commercially available screen-printed electrodes. In addition, the electroactive surface area of the SMECs is significantly higher than that of screen-printed electrodes, and they show an excellent analytical response toward dopamine detection. We anticipate that the developed solution-based fabrication approach will expedite the development of accessible miniaturized sensing platforms for a broad range of point-of-care applications.

Fabrication of microstructured electrodes via electroless metal deposition onto polydopamine-coated polystyrene substrates and thermal shrinking

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.