An Impedance-Transduced Chemiresistor with a Porous Carbon Channel for Rapid, Nonenzymatic, Glucose Sensing

Abstract

A new type of chemiresistor, the impedance-transduced chemiresistor (ITCR), is described for the rapid analysis of glucose. The ITCR exploits porous, high surface area, fluorine-doped carbon nanofibers prepared by electrospinning of fluorinated polymer nanofibers followed by pyrolysis. These nanofibers are functionalized with a boronic acid receptor and stabilized by Nafion to form the ITCR channel for glucose detection. The recognition and binding of glucose by the ITCR is detected by measuring its electrical impedance at a single frequency. The analysis frequency is selected by measuring the signal-to-noise (S/N) for glucose detection across 5 orders of magnitude, evaluating both the imaginary and real components of the complex impedance. On the basis of this analysis, an optimal frequency of 13 kHz is selected for glucose detection, yielding an S/N ratio of 60-100 for [glucose] = 5 mM using the change in the total impedance, Delta Z. The resulting ITCR glucose sensor shows a rapid analysis time (<8 s), low coefficient of variation for a series of sensors (<10%), an analysis range of 50 mu M to 5 mM, and excellent specificity versus fructose, ascorbic acid, and uric acid. These metrics for the ITCR are obtained using a sample size as small as 5 mu L.