Amperometric Measurements by a Novel Aerosol Jet Printed Flexible Sensor for Wearable Applications

In the last years, increasing interest has been addressed on wearable devices for the continuous monitoring of biochemical profiles of patients and athletes. Among various markers, lactate represents one of the most interesting to deepen the knowledge on fatigue processes, in combination with traditional electromyographic features. In this work, we propose a new, low-cost, rapid, and flexible electrochemical amperometric lactate carbon biosensor fabricated by the novel technique of aerosol jet printing (AJP). The developed biosensors were combined with a paper-based microfluidic system and a chitosan-based stable functionalization to allow a long-term continuous monitoring of human daily activities. The sensor performances were evaluated by static and dynamic electrochemical tests in buffered media. The limit of detection is 11 ± 2 mM for the static setup and of 15 ± 6 mM for the dynamic setup, while sensitivity is 0.02 and 0.04 $\mu \text{A}$ /mM, respectively, with single sigma standard deviation lower than 8%. Increasing and decreasing concentration steps of lactate induces comparable response times below 30 s. These results obtained in vitro under controlled laboratory conditions represent a promising starting point to pursue with ex-vivo and in vivo validation for the future development of stand-alone wearable patches for noninvasive lactate measurements.