Craft-and-Stick Xurographic Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidic Electrochemical Sensing Platform

Abstract

An innovative modular approach for facile design and construction of flexible microfluidic biosensor platforms based on a dry manufacturing “craft-and-stick” approach is developed. The design and fabrication of the flexible graphene paper electrode (GPE) unit and polyethylene tetraphthalate sheet (PET)6/adhesive fluidic unit are completed by an economic and generic xurographic craft approach. The GPE widths and the microfluidic channels can be constructed down to 300 μm and 200 μm, respectively. Both units were assembled by simple double-sided adhesive tapes into a microfluidic integrated GPE (MF-iGPE) that are flexible, thin (<0.5 mm), and lightweight (0.4 g). We further functionalized the iGPE with Prussian blue and glucose oxidase for the fabrication of MF-iGPE glucose biosensors. With a closed-channel PET fluidic pattern, the MF-iGPE glucose biosensors were packaged and sealed to protect the integrated device from moisture for storage and could easily open with scissors for sample loading. Our glucose biosensors showed 2 linear dynamic regions of 0.05–1.0 and 1.0–5.5 mmol L−1 glucose. The MF-iGPE showed good reproducibility for glucose detection (RSD < 6.1%, n = 6) and required only 10 μL of the analyte. This modular craft-and-stick manufacturing approach could potentially further develop along the concept of paper-crafted model assembly kits suitable for low-resource laboratories or classroom settings.