Screen-Printed Electrodes on Tyvek Substrate as Low-Cost Device to Applications in Alzheimer’s Disease Detection

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by impairment of cognitive functions and memory deterioration, which requires an early diagnosis for effective treatment. The use of immunosensors to detect Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers stand out as a quick and cheap alternative for early detection of the disease. The development of Screen-Printed Electrodes (SPEs) meets a growing demand in the market for applications such as signal transducers in biosensor devices. In this work was development a method for fabrication of low cost SPE for application in the detection of Alzheimer’s disease through autoantibodies. It was produced microelectrodes on polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) manufactured by DuPont Tyvek® substrates. SPEs produced on Tyvek® substrates have shown promising results for low-cost, disposable and flexible sensors. The carbon paste showed excellent adhesion to Tyvek® substrate and the electrodes produced showed an electrochemical performance comparable to commercial electrodes, besides reproducible. The detection results showed that it is possible to detect anti-Aβ40 autoantibodies in real samples of serum and cerebrospinal fluid using the electrode modified with two bilayers of (PEI/(DDPG + Aβ40)) since the capacitance increased more in positive sample with the presence of autoantibody than in negative samples.