Polishing of screen-printed electrodes improves IgG adsorption

The screen-printing technology has several advantages over the others for i ndustrial sensor production. In fact, it has the advantage of its heterogen eic nature, which is very similar to carbon paste electrodes, combined with the properties of solid electrodes. Carbon ink may be modified with metall ic particles, mediators, biocomponents, etc. Carbon screen-printed electrod e (SPE) may be coated with additional layers by again screen-printing, adso rption, electropolymerization, etc. The aim of this work is to investigate the effect of polishing the carbon SPE for the active electrode area, for a dsorption properties, and for reproducibility. Two polishing methods were i nvestigated, a gentle method using an office paper, and an aggressive one u sing an emery paper (SiC 240 mum). The adsorption of rabbit immunoglobulin (IgG) was significantly enhanced in the order, emery paper > office paper > original. The reproducibility between electrodes was found to be in this o rder, office paper > emery paper > original. The electrode area was not sig nificantly affected by any polishing. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All ri ghts reserved.