Study on the applicability of polytetrafluoroethylene–silver composite thin films as sensor material

A study on applicability of conductive high specific surface PTFE/Ag composite layers as active electrodes of a non-enzymatic cholesterol sensor is presented. The composite layers were prepared on one of the two neighboring electrode of a printed circuit board by pulsed laser deposition technique where targets composed of silver and PTFE were ablated by an ArF excimer laser. Cholesterol was dissolved in 0.1 M NaOH in different concentrations in 0–5 mM range. A drop of cholesterol covered the two electrodes and a constant current of 10 μA was forced through the sample while the voltage between the electrodes was measured by means of a high resolution A/D converter with 1 kHz sampling rate for 5 s periods. Instead of the time-averaged signal monitoring we applied the Fluctuation-Enhanced Sensing (FES) method which is based on the analysis of the stochastic component of the signal. The power spectral density of the fluctuation was found to be dependent on the cholesterol concentration of the samples. Principal Component Analysis method was used for quantifying the difference between the recorded spectra. A tendentious variation of the spectral properties as the function of the cholesterol concentration was observed. The results indicate that the FES technique combined with high specific surface composite electrodes may be a useful tool for cholesterol detection.