Surface Engineered Pyrolyzed Carbon Electrode Arrays for Bio-Sensing

There is urgent need to develop highly selective, sensitive and reproducible miniaturized bio-sensing platform based on reliable interface that is compatible with microfabrication processing. Our research objective is to advance fundamental research by fabricating pyrolyzed carbon arrays with high surface area as a bio-sensing electrode, developing the functionalization methods to increasing biomolecules immobilization efficiency and further understanding electrochemical phenomena occurring at bio/carbon interfaces. The carbon microelectrode arrays with high aspect ratio and porous surface have been fabricated by carbon microelectromechanical systems (C-MEMS) while the nanomaterials such as graphene have been integrated to further increase surface area. To achieve the efficient covalent immobilization of biomolecules, various oxidation and reduction functionalization methods have been investigated. The oxidation treatment we used in this study includes vacuum ultraviolet, electrochemical activation, UV/Ozone and oxygen RIE. The reduction treatment includes direct amination and diazonium grafting. The functionalized surface has been characterized using XPS, CV and FTIR to confirm and calculate the surface coverage of different functional groups. The developed bio-sensing platform was then applied for several applications, such as: DNA sensor; Glucose sensor; H₂O₂ sensor; Aptamer sensor and HIV sensor. The performance and sensitivity of each biosensor will be discussed in the talk.