A silicon nanowire-based electrochemical glucose biosensor with high electrocatalytic activity and sensitivity

An electrochemical glucose biosensor was developed by immobilizing glucose oxidase (GOx) on an electrode decorated with a novel nanostructure, silicon nanowires (SiNWs) with in situ grown gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). The immobilized GOx displayed a pair of well-defined and quasi-reversible redox peaks with a formal potential (E°′) of -0.376 V in a phosphate buffer solution. The fabricated glucose biosensor has good electrocatalytic activity toward oxidation of glucose. In addition, such resultant SiNWs-based glucose biosensor possesses high biological affinity. Particularly, the apparent Michaelis-Mentan constant was estimated to be 0.902 mM, which is much smaller than the reported values for GOx at a range of nanomaterials-incorporated electrodes. Consequently, this novel SiNWs-based biosensor is expected to be a promising tool for biological assays (e.g., monitoring blood glucose).