Application of thick film technology in mass production of biosensors.

Thick film technology is known to be a widely used tool for the fabrication of electronic circuits. It is normally based on the screen-printing and firing of various pastes differing in composition and electrical properties under different firing temperature. They are then classified as conductor, resistor, dielectric, and soldering pastes.1 Recently, the application of thick film technology has been extended to other research and application fields, particularly to sensors and transducers—for example, a number of special pastes with lower firing temperature have appeared, leading to more options for biological sensor fabrication. On the other hand, using thick film technology, the whole device is cheaper than those prepared handmade and it is possible to produce disposable sensors at a rather low price even on a medium scale. Some electrochemical thick film sensors have already been described in the literature (see references in the previously cited source). In this paper, we demonstrate the application of thick film technology to the construction of biosensors with commercially available paste materials, biological enzyme elements, and electron transfer mediators.