Production of conductive filaments containing carbon nanomaterials and metal nanoparticles for the development of low cost enzymeless electrochemical biosensors via additive manufacturing

Abstract

3D printing is the most popular form of Additive Manufacturing (AM). This technology allows the fabrication of three-dimensional objects with the most varied applications in many fields, especially in the chemistry area. Various commercialized electrochemical devices, such as printed electrodes and mainly electrochemical cells, have relatively high costs. Therefore, AM is promising, from the economic and scientific point of view, in the construction of improved electroanalytical devices. To achieve this, the popularization of 3D printers allowed these devices to be printed quickly at very low costs, requiring only one design (designed in specialized software) and polymeric materials (thermoplastics). In addition to AM making it possible to create new analytical apparatus in non-commercially available configurations, it is possible to print modified conductive electrodes with different materials usable for the analysis of different analytes. Thus, the present project aims at the development of modified filaments (composites) with carbon conductive materials (graphene, carbon black, and carbon nanotubes) and metallic nanoparticles (copper, nickel, and gold), from a filament extruder, for the manufacture of low cost enzymeless electrochemical biosensors for the selective determination of analytes of biologic importance, among them glucose, uric acid and lactate in biologic samples. In the manufacture of these new sensors will be evaluated the best proportions between modifying materials and thermoplastics, taking into account the electrochemical response and printability. The characterization of the modified filaments will be performed through techniques such as microscopy, Raman, infrared, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, among others. (AU)