Inkjet-Printed Dissolved Oxygen and pH Sensors on Flexible Plastic Substrates

There are a broad range of applications such as analytical sensors, biosensing and medical applications that require the monitoring of dissolved oxygen (DO) and pH using sensitive, stable, compact and low cost sensors. Here we develop full inkjet printing sensors to measure DO and pH. They have been fabricated using commercially available gold and platinum inks in plastic substrates. The inks are specially designed formulation which allows their sintering at temperatures as low as 150 and 190 degrees C for Au and Pt respectively. This is a key point in the development of low-cost sensors made on plastic and paper substrates. These sensors integrate in a single platform all the basic elements for pH and DO recording, allowing the measures without any external electrode. The DO is directly measured with a gold working electrode, and the pH sensors is achieved after electrodepositing iridium oxide film over platinum working electrode. The printed electrodes for DO sensing exhibits excellent linearity between 0 and 8 mg.L-1 range, with correlation factors greater than 0.99, obtaining low limits of detection, 0.17 mg.L-1 and a sensitivity of 0.06 mu A.(mg.L)(-1). IrOx pH sensors exhibit a super-Nernstian response in sensitivity repeatedly and reversibly between 65 mV/pH in the pH range of 3 to 10. This work demonstrates that these sensors are suitable for the determination of DO and pH and provide a cost-effective solution for future electrochemical monitoring systems.