A Novel Non-Enzymatic Electrochemical Glucose Biosensor Based on a Simple Lithographic Process

Diabetes is a severe public health problem globally. There are about 387 million people worldwide suffer from this medical condition. Regular detection of a diabetes patient’s blood glucose is essential to maintain the blood sugar level. In this study, a novel non-enzyme glucose biosensor based on a simple lithographic process is proposed. Photoresist AZ-1518 is spinning-coated on a silicon wafer. Exposure and development using a mask with hexagonal close-packed circle array is than conducted to generate a hexagonal close-packed column array of the AZ-1518. The diameter of each circle is set as 4 μm. A thermal melting process is than employed to convert each photoresist column into a photoresist hemisphere. Finally, a gold thin film is then sputtered onto the hemisphere array of AZ-1518 to form the sensing electrode. The sensing area is measured to be enhanced by 8.8 folds. Actual glucose detections demonstrated that the proposed simple non-enzyme glucose biosensor can operate in a linear range of 2.8 mM–27.8 mM and a sensitivity of 18.7 μA mM⁻¹cm⁻². A detection limit of 9 μM (S/N = 3) was measured. The proposed novel glucose biosensor possesses advantages of enzyme free, simple fabrication process, low cost, and easy to long-term preservation. It is feasible for future clinical applications.