Development of organic functional materials based electrode modifiers and their electrochemical characterization in microfluidics coupled SECM: environmental and biochemical applications

Abstract

Electrode modification of an electrochemical sensing device remains one of the key parameters to achieve the desired sensitivity and selectivity towards a target analyte. Phthalocyanines materials and their composites with Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), graphene and metal nanoparticles can be potential candidates for such applications in chemical as well as biological recognition. This is because of their versatile electrocatalytic properties, highly porous nature of these composites and compatibility with different types of electrode materials. We propose here a research plan to fabricate miniaturized electrochemical sensing platforms to get highly sensitive, selective, reproducible, cost-efficient measurements of environmental and biological analytes. Our strategies are based on three aspects to achieve this goal; (a) Modifying the sensing electrode surface with phthalocyanines based composite materials to achieve high sensitivity and selectivity, (b) Use of a microfluidic device to achieve miniaturization, cost reduction and reproducible measurements, and (c) integrating the microfluidic platform with a Scanning Electrochemical Microscope to get further insight into the electrochemical properties of sensing materials and overall sensing characteristics enhancement. (AU)