Integration of silica nanowires to carbon MEMS for glucose sensors

A novel method of fabricating glucose sensors based on silica nanowire integrated carbon micro-electrode arrays (CMEAs) was reported in this work. Densely grown silica nanowires were integrated to three-dimensional (3D) CMEAs via carbonization of micropatterned photoresist with Cu as the catalyst. Immobilization of enzyme onto the CMEAs was carried out through co-deposition of glucose oxidase (GOx) and electrochemically polymerized polypyrrole (PPy). Sensing performance of the glucose sensors with and without silica nanowire modification was tested and compared. It was shown that the sensitivity was greatly improved with the integration of silica nanowires, which may be due to the increased effective electro-active surface area.