A microfluidic electrochemical sensor for detecting the very low concentration endocrine disruptor with self assembled monolayer and preconcentration technique

This paper demonstrates a microfluidic electrochemical sensor for detecting endocrine disruptor such as estradiol at a very low concentration by using preconcentration technique. In addition, self-assembled monolayer(SAM) was also employed on the working electrode of the electrochemical sensor in order to increase the estradiol capture efficiency of the sensor. SAM treatment on the working electrode enhanced the specific binding between the surface of the working electrode and the estradiol antibody. The estradiol antibody was applied on the working electrode at different concentrations(10, 20, 50, 100, 200 pg/ml) for observing the concentration dependency. The measured electrochemical redox current changed with the amount of the bound estradiol on the Au working electrode surface and the sensor can detect all the target material when the immobilized antibody amount is more than the estradiol amount in the water. The elecrochemical estradiol sensor without SAM treatment showed a low current of 7.79 nA, while the sensor treated with SAM resulted in 339 nA at 200 pg/ml, which is more than 40 fold higher output current. When combining the preconcentration technique and the SAM-treated electrode, the measured current became more than 100 fold higher than that of the sensor without neither SAM treatment nor preconcentration technique. The combination of these two techniques can would enable the proposed microfluidic electrochemical sensor to detect a very low concentration endocrine disruptor..