Pyrolytic carbon microelectrodes for impedance based cell sensing

Electrically conductive glass-like carbon structures can be obtained from a polymer template through a pyrolysis process. These structures can be used as electrodes for bio sensing applications such as electrochemical evaluation of cell adhesion and proliferation. This study focuses on the optimization of two dimensional (2D) pyrolytic carbon microelectrodes with the carbon MEMS (C-MEMS) process using the negative epoxy photoresist SU-8.

Different electrochemical microchips with carbon working (WE) and counter electrode (CE) were fabricated. More specifically, pyrolysis process was optimized to decrease the resistivity of the resulting carbon material and improve the performance in cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).

Finally, EIS was used to monitor adhesion and proliferation of HeLa cells.