Abstract
Screen printing technology provides a cheap and easy means to fabricate disposable electrochemical devices in bulk quantities which are used for rapid, low-cost, on-site, real-time and recurrent industrial, pharmaceutical or environmental analyses. Recent developments in micro-fabrication and nano-characterization made it possible to screen print reproducible feature on materials including plastics, ceramics and metals. The processed features forms screen-printed disposable biochip (SPDB) upon the application of suitable bio-chemical recognition receptors following appropriate methods. Adequacy of biological and non-biological materials is the key to successful biochip development. We can further improve recognition ability of SPDBs by adopting new screen printed electrode (SPE) configurations. This review covers screen-printing theory with special emphasis on the technical impacts of SPE architectures, surface treatments, operational stability and signal sensitivity. The application of SPE in different areas has also been summarized. The article aims to highlight the state-of-the-art of SPDB at the laboratory scale to enable us in envisaging the deployment of emerging SPDB technology on the commercial scale.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Farhang Tarlan for manuscript editing and proof reading.
Declaration of interest
Minhaz Uddin Ahmed, Yen Lu Wong, and Ibrahim Abd Rahman are grateful to the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) for a financial support from University Research Council 2012-2013 (UBD grant#UBD/PNC2/2/RG/1(255)) for conducting this review article. Mohammadali Safavieh thanks NSERC-CREATE ISS fellowship and Fond Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies (FQRNT) scholarship for financial support.
Supplementary material available online
Supplemental Tables S1 and S2.