Environmentally friendly disposable sensors with microfabricated on-chip planar bismuth electrode for in situ heavy metal ions measurement

This paper presents an environmentally friendly disposable heavy metal ion sensor for in situ and online monitoring in the nature and physiological systems. The miniaturized sensor chip consists of a non-toxic microfabricated bismuth (Bi) working electrode that replaces the conventional mercury electrodes, an integrated Ag/AgCl reference electrode, a gold counter electrode, and microfluidic channels. In this work, the electrochemical behavior of the Bi working electrode was characterized in several non-deaerated buffer solutions using cyclic voltammetry. The detection and quantification of Pb (II) and Cd (II) were statically performed using anodic stripping voltammetry inside the microchannels, in the Pb (II) concentration range of 25–400 ppb (R² = 0.991) with limit of detection of 8 ppb for 60 s deposition, and in the Cd (II) concentration range of 28–280 ppb (R² = 0.986) with limit of detection of 9.3 ppb for 90 s deposition. Particularly, the applications of this sensor chip have been reported with the examples of in situ measurement of Cd (II) concentration in soil pore and ground water and online direct measurement of Cd (II) concentration in cell culture media in its native environment.