Nanopaper-based screen-printed electrodes: a hybrid sensing bioplatform for dual opto-electrochemical sensing applications

Abstract

Given the importance of developing easy-to-use, disposable, affordable, and portable hybrid opto-electrochemical sensing devices, for the first time, we have developed a nanopaper-based screen-printed electrode (SPE) by taking advantage of the high optical transparency, affordability, biocompatibility, printability, flexibility, and other unrivaled physicochemical properties of bacterial cellulose (BC) nanopaper in screen printing technology. To fabricate the BC-SPE platform, a screen-printed three-electrode system was transferred onto the dried film of a pre-printed BC nanopaper-based substrate. Because of the optical transparency of the BC nanopaper, the fabricated BC-SPE platform can be used as a hybrid sensing platform for simultaneous optical and electrochemical (bio)sensing applications. A portable photometer was also assembled to measure the optical signals of the fabricated BC-SPE. The opto-electrochemical tunable properties of Prussian blue and their application in the dual optical and electrochemical sensing of acetaminophen as a model analyte were investigated using the fabricated BC-SPE to demonstrate the sensing applicability of the developed hybrid bioplatform. Moreover, we prove that our fabricated BC-SPE can be potentially exploited as a smartphone-based electrochemiluminescence (ECL) sensing platform. We envisage that our developed BC-SPE platform will find promising practical application in the detection of a wide range of (bio)chemicals, and also would be inspirational for the development of novel hybrid opto-electrochemical (bio)sensing devices.