Publication
Title
Gold-sputtered microelectrodes with built-in gold reference and counter electrodes for electrochemical DNA detection
Author
Abstract
Gold-sputtered microelectrodes with built-in gold reference and counter electrodes represent a promising platform for the development of disposable DNA sensors. Pretreating gold electrode surfaces and immobilization of DNA thereon is commonly employed in biosensing applications. However, with no scientific or practical guidelines to prepare a DNA sensor using these miniature gold-sputtered microelectrodes, cleaning and immobilization steps need to be systematically optimized and updated. In this work, we present efficient cleaning and modification of miniaturized gold-sputtered microelectrodes with thiolated DNA probes for DNA detection. Additional discussions on subtleties and nuances involved at each stage of pretreating and modifying gold-sputtered microelectrodes are included to present a robust, well-founded protocol. It was evident that the insights on cleaning polycrystalline gold disk electrodes with a benchmark electrode surface for DNA sensors, cannot be transferred to clean these miniature gold-sputtered microelectrodes. Therefore, a comparison between five different cleaning protocols was made to find the optimal one for gold-sputtered microelectrodes. Additionally, two principally different immobilization techniques for gold-sputtered microelectrode modification with thiolated ssDNA were compared i.e., immobilization through passive chemisorption and potential perturbation were compared in terms of thiol-specific attachment and thiol-unspecific adsorption through nitrogenous bases. The hybridization performance of these prepared electrodes was characterized by their sensitive complementary DNA capturing ability, detected by a standard alkaline phosphatase assay. Immobilization through passive chemisorption proved to be efficient in capturing the complementary target DNA with a detection limit of 0.14 nM and sensitivity of 9.38 A M−1 cm2. In general, this work presents a comprehensive understanding of cleaning, modification and performance of gold-sputtered microelectrodes with built-in gold reference and counter electrodes for both fundamental investigations and practical DNA sensing applications.
Language
English
Source (journal)
The analyst. - Cambridge, 1876, currens
Publication
Cambridge : 2020
ISSN
0003-2654 [print]
1364-5528 [online]
DOI
10.1039/D0AN01387K
Volume/pages
145 (2020) , p. 7646-7653
ISI
000592315100017
Pubmed ID
32966365
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Photosensitizers generating singlet oxygen: emerging analytical (bio)sensing tools.
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 26.10.2020
Last edited 13.11.2024
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