Sustainable monitoring of Zn(II) in biological fluids using office paper

Abstract

a b s t r a c tHerein, we describe a sustainable and inexpensive approach to monitor Zn(II) in biological fluids by fabricating an office paper-based electrochemical sensor. By following two easy steps, consisting of wax patterning and electrode screen-printing, the office paper provides an effective electroanalytical tool that is easily extensible to a broad range of analytes. This approach would be able to develop affordable userfriendly sensing devices, tackling the lack of resources in regions with poor-settings/facilities. In order to provide more details regarding the screen-printed electrodes fabrication, office paper, Whatman #1 chromatrographic paper, and polyester have been characterized with electrochemical, morphological, and mechanical tests and compared. Using office paper, Zn(II) has been detected linearly up to 2 g/mL with a detection limit equal to 25 ng/mL and a relative standard deviation of 8%. To highlight the feasibility, reliability, and easiness of the proposed electrochemical sensor, Zn(II) has been detected in serum and sweat at physiological level ( g/mL), and the accuracy of the method has been verified by satisfactory recoveries close to 100%.

Electroanalysis moves towards paper-based printed electronics: carbon black nanomodified inkjet-printed sensor for ascorbic acid detection as a case study

“…cover the three electrodes of the resulting electrochemical cell. Using this type of paper, the diffusion of the solution trough the cellulosic network was not observed as in the case of filter or office paper [10,11], reason for that the hydrophobic regions using wax printing were not produced.…”

“…The test zone of the electrochemical cell was then loaded with glucose oxidase, lactate oxidase, and uricase to detect glucose, lactate, and uric acid, respectively. After this pioneering work, several electrochemical paper-based sensors were developed using different paper-based substrates, such as Japanese paper [9], standard filter paper (e.g., Cordenons) [10], office paper [11], and chromatography paper (e.g., Whatman #1), [12,13]). However, these paper types are not suitable for printed electronics since the substrate should be characterized by minimized roughness and low humidity sensitivity.…”

Carbon Black-Modified Electrodes Screen-Printed onto Paper Towel, Waxed Paper and Parafilm M®

“…For electrochemical device mass-production, printing technology has been widely employed for fabricating customized, miniaturized, and reproducible electrochemical tools at a large scale. Among the different printing techniques, screen-printing is one of the most widely used, because it is a simple and cost-effective technique [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]: it only requires masks, a squeegee, and an oven.…”

“…By changing the material of the substrate, a cost reduction of $0.5–1.0 per plastic-based strip to $0.014 per paper-based strip was achieved [ 31 ]. In addition, we calculated a further 30% savings sensor manufacturing by moving from chromatographic to office paper [ 11 ]. These results notably match with the requests made by the WHO, as the cost of $0.5–1.0/strip is impractical for applications in the developing world.…”

A Paper‐Based Potentiometric Sensor for Solid Samples: Corrosion Evaluation of Reinforcements Embedded in Concrete Structures as a Case Study

“…Then, the analysis can be carried out by just dissolving the pre‐loaded reagents with the addition of aqueous solutions (e. g. a liquid sample), resulting in a reagent‐free approach. In addition, the paper structure can provide an intrinsic filtering capacity to the device, decreasing negative matrix effects from complex samples, such as environmental waters or biological fluids . Overall, paper properties enable to significantly simplify the analytical protocols, including the sampling and the analysis procedures.…”