Mechanism of amperometric biosensor with electronic-type-controlled carbon nanotube

An amperometric enzyme biosensor with electronic-type-controlled (metallic and semiconducting) single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is presented. In this research, we investigate how the electronic types of CNTs influence the amperometric response of enzyme biosensors and what their working mechanisms are. The biosensor of interest is for glucose detection using enzyme glucose oxidase (GOD). In the presence of oxygen, the response of a metallic CNT-GOD electrode was 2.5 times more sensitive than that of a semiconducting CNT-GOD electrode. In contrast, in the absence of oxygen, the response of the semiconducting CNT-GOD electrode was retained, whereas that of the metallic CNT-GOD electrode was significantly reduced. This indicates that direct electron transfer occurred with the semiconducting CNT-GOD electrode, whereas the metallic CNTGOD electrode was dominated by a hydrogen peroxide pathway caused by an enzymatic reaction. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was used to show that the semiconducting CNT network has less resistance for electron transfer than the metallic CNT network. The optimized glucose biosensor revealed a sensitivity of 5.6 ?AmM%1cm%2 at +0.6 V vs Ag/AgCl, a linear dynamic range of 0.025-1.4 mM, and a response time of 8 s.