Highly sensitive copper nanowire conductive electrode for nonenzymatic glucose detection

Commercial diabetes test strips, patterned with a carbon paste, has poor durability and preservability because of using enzyme. Furthermore, carbon paste needs sintering process to get proper conductivity. Therefore, alternative conductive ink and sensing materials are the research theme under consideration lately. Therefore, we demonstrated constructing copper nanowire paste glucose sensor strip (CuNW_GSS) platform to diagnose diabetes nonenzymatically. Copper nanowires (CuNWs) were fabricated by a simple hydrothermal method with a capping agent to preserve the CuNWs from oxidation. Moreover, the CuNW paste could be easily utilized without sintering, and this fabricated paste successfully substituted for the commercial carbon paste pattern due to its high conductivity. CuNWs were used as not only the composition of conductive copper paste but also the sensing material for detecting glucose, which grants high charge transport ability to the glucose sensor, leading to high sensing ability. The limit of detection (LOD) of the CuNW_GSS was 1 nM, which is 40 times higher sensitivity than those of other glucose sensors and the CuNW_GSS also exhibited excellent selectivity. The excellent sensitivity and selectivity clearly indicate the great potential of the CuNW_GSS in diagnosing diabetes easily.