Review—Inkjet Printing of Metal Structures for Electrochemical Sensor Applications

Abstract

Inkjet printing has emerged as a leading technology for additive manufacturing of electronic devices. It is particularly attractive in applications that require low waste, low-cost fabrication techniques. Most printing processes for electronic device applications involve the fabrication of metal structures owing to the availability of metal-based inks and the high quality structures that can be produced using these inks. As a result of rapid advances in the development of sensor-dependent technology areas like IoT and flexible/wearable electronics, inkjet printing has recently expanded into the sensor area due, in part to its inherent compatibility with a wide variety of polymer substrates and roll-to-roll processing. This review focuses on the development of inkjet-printed elemental metal structures for electrochemical applications. Included in this paper is a review of commonly used and newly emerging ink technologies, post printing sintering processes, functionalization of printed metal surfaces to enhance sensing capabilities and a variety of inkjet-printed electrochemical sensors including gas sensors, ion sensors, pH sensors, glucose sensors, and biomolecule sensors.

Accounts in 3D‐Printed Electrochemical Sensors: Towards Monitoring of Environmental Pollutants

“…[29,30] Inks: The most common conducting inks used for electrochemical sensing devices manufacturing are based on metal nanoparticles, metallo-organic decomposition (MOD) and inorganic salts. [31] Metal nanoparticles inks (i. e., Ag and Au) consist of colloidal nanoparticle suspensions stabilized with capping agents which prevent agglomerations. MOD inks typically use thermolysis to reduce metal-containing compounds precursors to metals, while inorganic salt inks (i. e., Bi, Pb, Sn) are reduced to metals employing low-temperature Ar plasma.…”

“…Concretely, an electrochemical sensor using a Bi salt ink to detect Pb 2 + traces was fabricated via electrochemical reduction on the Bi-based electrode surface to form a PbÀ Bi complex, which was subsequently voltametrically converted back to Pb 2 + , yielding a detection limit of 0.1 μM. [31] Comparing to a conventional electrodeposited Bi electrode, the sensitivity was increased around 12 times taking advantage of this 3D printing technology. Additionally, the electrochemical determination of Hg 2 + in water was also explored by using an inkjet-printed Au carrying a thiolated DNA aptamer as a biorecognition system.…”

Printed Electrodes in Microfluidic Arrays for Cancer Biomarker Protein Detection

“…In efforts to decrease the cost of electrochemical arrays, our team has developed inkjet-printed arrays [ 31 , 98 ]. Inkjet printing offers several advantages over screen printing in that it is a contactless method for fabrication that does not require a stencil or template [ 32 , 35 , 153 ]. Design patterns can be developed using digital software patterns that can be sent to the relatively simple materials inkjet printer in a similar manner to using an office inkjet printer.…”

“…Over the past several decades miniaturization and the production cost of electrodes that make up the electrochemical sensor platform has improved with the advent of a variety of thin-film technologies. Common methods in developing these thin-film electronic devices include chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [ 27 ], photolithography [ 28 ], stencil printing [ 29 ], screen printing [ 30 ], and inkjet printing [ 31 , 32 ]. Inkjet printing has also been used to make flexible thin-film transistors that can be used as sensors [ 33 ].…”

Sustainable Printed Electrochemical Platforms for Greener Analytics

“…Moreover, as opposed to screen-printing where large amounts of paste are required, inkjet-printing uses very little amount of material, which is always a good advantage in terms of eco-sustainability. Furthermore, this technique reduces the amount of dangerous and environmentally-sensitive wastes (Sui and Zorman, 2020 ).…”