Haydale recently reported on a presentation given at the recent Advanced Functional & Industrial Printing 2016 meeting that describes the development of roll-to-roll gravure printing of biosensors based on electrically conductive graphene structures and adherence proteins.
The described development was a result of a project undertaken by a consortium of organizations lead by the Frauhofer Institut fur Biomedizinische Technik (IBMT) and involving Haydale in the development of biocompatible and electrically conductive graphene ink suited for gravure printing. The next stage of this project is to validate the performance of the biosensors in a series of target applications.
Using Haydale's proprietary HDPlas plasma technology, the company was able to develop the required surface functionalized graphene ink that was gravure printed and implemented as a base biosensor on cell culture microplates.
The presentation provides detail of the graphene ink biosensor development, its electrical characterization and cytotoxicity testing. Further information is provided on fabrication of the gravure printing cylinders and the R2R gravure printing process using the graphene ink. The developed graphene ink has been shown not to be cytotoxic and thus suitable for use in biosensors. Cell adhesion is enhanced by additional protein coating on the graphene structures.