Nanoelectrode Arrays Fabricated by Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography for Biosensing Application

Abstract

Electrochemical sensors are devices capable of detecting molecules and biomolecules in solutions and determining the concentration through direct electrical measurements. These systems can be miniaturized to a size less than 1 µm through the creation of small-size arrays of nanoelectrodes (NEA), offering advantages in terms of increased sensitivity and compactness. In this work, we present the fabrication of an electrochemical platform based on an array of nanoelectrodes (NEA) and its possible use for the detection of antigens of interest. NEAs were fabricated by forming arrays of nanoholes on a thin film of polycarbonate (PC) deposited on boron-doped diamond (BDD) macroelectrodes by thermal nanoimprint lithography (TNIL), which demonstrated to be a highly reliable and reproducible process. As proof of principle, gliadin protein fragments were physisorbed on the polycarbonate surface of NEAs and detected by immuno-indirect assay using a secondary antibody labelled with horseradish peroxidase (HRP). This method allows a successful detection of gliadin, in the range of concentration of 0.5–10 μg/mL, by cyclic voltammetry taking advantage from the properties of NEAs to strongly suppress the capacitive background signal. We demonstrate that the characteristics of the TNIL technology in the fabrication of high-resolution nanostructures together with their low-cost production, may allow to scale up the production of NEAs-based electrochemical sensing platform to monitor biochemical molecules for both food and biomedical applications.