The Development of Paper-Based Electrodes to Detect Glucose

Begay, Makeiyla

A high costing screen-printed electrode, the electrochemical software required, and a electrochemistry laboratory are all needed to conduct a electrochemical test. The need for this type of technology on the Navajo Nation is important because it would allow them to have real-time, on-site detection that is cost effective. This would allow the Navajo Nation to detect and analyze compounds that may cause severe health issues.

The materials that are required to fabricate these paper-based electrodes are chromatography paper, a wax printer, electrochemically active and conductive ink, electrochemistry equipment, buffer solution, and the compound that is being tested.

First we would get chromatography paper and print the electrode outline, designed at Navajo Technical University, using the wax printer. The next step is to coat the electrodes with the conductive ink and add gold or copper nano-particles, which will act as our catalyst. Then we get our compound, which is Glucose in this case, and test multiple different concentrations. With the electrochemical software we are able to use different types of techniques like Differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and Cyclic voltammetry (CV) to test Glucose.

We hope to continue testing with these electrodes to improve our techniques and ensure that we are able to test paper-based electrodes on multiple different compounds. Another goal of our project is to develop a way to conduct these tests while in the field.