Manufactured Flexible Electrodes for Dopamine Detection: Integration of Conducting Polymer in 3D‐Printed Polylactic Acid

Abstract

Flexible electrochemical sensors based on electroactive materials have emerged as powerful analytical tools for biomedical applications requiring bioanalytes detection. Within this context, 3D printing is a remarkable technology for developing electrochemical devices, due to no design constraints, waste minimization, and batch manufacturing with high reproducibility. However, the fabrication of 3D printed electrodes is still limited by the in‐house fabrication of conductive filaments, which requires the mixture of the electroactive material with melted of thermoplastic polymer (e.g., polylactic acid, PLA). Herein, a simple approach is presented for preparing electrochemical dopamine (DA) biosensors. Specifically, the surface of 3D‐printed PLA specimens, which exhibit an elastic modulus and a tensile strength of 3.7 ± 0.3 GPa and 47 ± 1 MPa, respectively, is activated applying a 0.5 m NaOH solution for 30 min and, subsequently, poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene) is polymerized in situ using aqueous solvent. The detection of DA with the produced sensors has been demonstrated by cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry, and chronoamperometry. In summary, the obtained results reflect that low‐cost electrochemical sensors, which are widely used in medicine and biotechnology, can be rapidly fabricated using the proposed approach that, although based on additive manufacturing, does not require the preparation of conductive filaments.

Posttreatment of 3D‐printed surfaces for electrochemical applications: A critical review on proposed protocols

“…30 In this regard, the use of non-conductive PLA filament has been reported for the manufacturing of a flexible biosensor for dopamine detection. 47 Although this work has demonstrated the possibility of applying nonconductive PLA filaments, most research groups have explored the advantages related to the use of PLA filament in composites with graphene (G/PLA) and CB (CB/PLA), as shown in Table 2. Abdalla and co-authors have compared 3D printed electrodes produced by both filaments by several techniques and towards the detection of different analytes.…”

3‐Dimensional Printing of Hydrogel‐Based Nanocomposites: A Comprehensive Review on the Technology Description, Properties, and Applications

“…[ 156 ] Other hydrogels have been extensively used in tissue engineering. [ 156–176 ] Table 4 shows the biological properties, including cellular assay and cell type of hydrogel‐based scaffolds.…”

Dual-Responsive Polypropylene Meshes Actuating as Thermal and SERS Sensors

“…Recent advances in polymer chemistry serve as the foundations for rapid progress in novel classes of sensor technologies for medical applications. − The combination of polymers and metal coatings (and/or polymer@metal particles), together with the micro- and macro-fabrication of electrodes, provide broad capabilities in continuous biophysical and biochemical measurements of health status, in many cases with levels of precision and accuracy that can compete with clinical detection standards . One example is the recent work published by Seo et al, where they developed a gold nanonetwork (Au NN)-based microelectrode adaptable to monitor neural activities (called “electrocorticogram”, ECoG).…”