Flexible Electrochemical Bioelectronics: The Rise of In Situ Bioanalysis

Abstract

The amalgamation of flexible electronics in biological systems has shaped the way health and medicine are administered. The growing field of flexible electrochemical bioelectronics enables the in situ quantification of a variety of chemical constituents present in the human body and holds great promise for personalized health monitoring owing to its unique advantages such as inherent wearability, high sensitivity, high selectivity, and low cost. It represents a promising alternative to probe biomarkers in the human body in a simpler method compared to conventional instrumental analytical techniques. Various bioanalytical technologies are employed in flexible electrochemical bioelectronics, including ion‐selective potentiometry, enzymatic amperometry, potential sweep voltammetry, field‐effect transistors, affinity‐based biosensing, as well as biofuel cells. Recent key innovations in flexible electrochemical bioelectronics from electrochemical sensing modalities, materials, systems, fabrication, to applications are summarized and highlighted. The challenges and opportunities in this field moving forward toward future preventive and personalized medicine devices are also discussed.

Flexible potentiometric pH sensors for wearable systems

“…8,10,[21][22][23][24][25][26] These sensors can measure a wide range of physicochemical and biological body parameters such as pH, glucose, urea, salinity, Ca 2+ and dopamine levels, etc., which are important for disease monitoring and diagnosis. 8,10,23,[27][28][29][30][31] Among various exible and stretchable electrochemical sensors, pH sensors are particularly important as pH levels inuence most chemical and biological reactions in materials, life and environmental sciences. Conventional glass pH electrodes are not suitable for wearable systems due to their lack of bending capability and the fact that glass can easily crack during user movement.…”

Label-Free Bioelectrochemical Methods for Evaluation of Anticancer Drug Effects at a Molecular Level

“…Finally, among the different bioelectrochemical approaches, it is worth mentioning that organic bioelectronics [98][99][100][101][102] is receiving great attention for its potential application in real-time selective noninvasive detection of chemical biomarkers, including drugs, metabolites, neurotransmitters, proteins, and hormones, in a variety of body fluids. The interactions of EGFR exon 21-point mutant gene with the anticancer drug Gemcitabine was recently evaluated using a DNA biosensor as reported in [82] and summarized in Table 3.…”

High-performance printed electronics based on inorganic semiconducting nano to chip scale structures

“…Flexible electronics has several advantages such as conformability to different shapes, which make it indispensable for above application areas where electronic devices are needed on unconventional substrates to either conform to curvy surfaces or to degrade naturally [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Accordingly, significant research efforts are being made to develop electronic devices and systems with flexible form factors and novel manufacturing technologies [9,11,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. These range from integrating off-the-shelf electronic devices on flexible printed circuit boards to printing functional inks and materials to realise active devices and circuits [21,31].…”