Paper-Based Screen-Printed Electrodes: A New Generation of Low-Cost Electroanalytical Platforms

Abstract

Screen-printed technology has helped considerably to the development of portable electrochemical sensors since it provides miniaturized but robust and user-friendly electrodes. Moreover, this technology allows to obtain very versatile transducers, not only regarding their design, but also their ease of modification. Therefore, in the last decades, the use of screen-printed electrodes (SPEs) has exponentially increased, with ceramic as the main substrate. However, with the growing interest in the use of cheap and widely available materials as the basis of analytical devices, paper or other low-cost flat materials have become common substrates for SPEs. Thus, in this revision, a comprehensive overview on paper-based SPEs used for analytical proposes is provided. A great variety of designs is reported, together with several examples to illustrate the main applications.

Keywords

• microfluidics
• electroanalysis
• paper-based devices (µPADs)
• paper-based electroanalytical devices (ePADs)
• screen-printed electrodes