Silver nanoparticles inkjet-printed flexible biosensor for rapid label-free antibiotic detection in milk

Inkjet printing is an established technology that has been revisited in recent years for the low-cost and easy production of electrical sensing and biosensing systems. With this technique, it is possible to produce flexible microsystems on eco-compatible substrates such as polymers and paper. In this sense, we investigated the printing performances of a common office inkjet printer and of a commercial conducting ink, to produce aptamer-based electrochemical biosensors for antibiotics detection. During our analysis we characterized both the morphological and electrical properties of the printed electrodes, considering also their stability over time and tuning all the parameters to obtain reproducible micrometric systems. The produced devices proved to be able to undergo aptamer functionalization and to detect Ampicillin, a common used antibiotic, in few minutes with a LOD of 10 μg/ml in milk. Therefore, in this preliminary work we demonstrated the feasibility of low-cost customized inkjet-printed biosensors, and their possible use to prevent both antibiotic contaminations and antibiotic resistance development.