Detection of Glucose with a Self-Made Biosensor 1/5 – Introduction

Most electrochemical devices with low current (< 1 A) and potential ranges (< 10 V) are used for analytical methods. For many lab technicians quantitative analysis is an everyday task. Monitoring processes, product quality, etc. are tasks that are performed very often. New methods or improvements of the old ones promise cheaper or faster execution of the analysis. 

This series of articles aims to provide an introduction to electrochemical experiments. This series in particular deals with the detection of glucose with a self-made biosensor based on glucose oxidase, and includes an experiment (PDF) you can carry out yourself. 

Goals

After reading this series of articles and carrying out its corresponding experiment, you should be able to know the following:

  • What is a biosensor?
  • What are the basic principles?
  • How can a biosensor be made?
  • Why detect glucose?

Biosensors

Biosensors exploit biomolecules for sensing purposes. They have a high selectivity and sensitivity. They can be built for various illnesses or other analytes. Although biomolecules are often difficult to handle and need special care, the number of developed biosensors is increasing.

The following articles will give you the basic introduction to biosensors, and finally a PDF of the experiment which you can print and perform yourself!

Please note that teachers can request the answers to the question in the instructions, using https://www.palmsens.com/contact/.