Impedimetric investigation of dual electrical properties of reduced graphene-oxide-based biosensors in the detection of dopamine

Because of the properties of high charge mobility, large detection area and chemical stability of graphene, it has been applied in many biomedical applications. Graphene oxide (GO) with abundant oxygenated functional groups is easily to form an aqueous suspension by sonication. Here, the exposed areas on the patterned-circuit silicon-based chips were first modified by (3-aminopropyl) trimethoxysilane (APTMS) for later chemically immobilized GO. After that, solution-based reduction process using hydrazine was used to gain reduced GO (RGO)-based biosensors. ESCA survey spectra showed oxygen-containing functional groups of GO decreased from 47% to 5.7%, 4.1%, 3.8%, and 3.6% under varied reduction times of 30 min, 40 min, 50 min, and 60 min, respectively. D/G intensity ratio (I
_D
/I
_G
) in Raman spectra showed 1.03 after 60-min reduction process. The 60-min reduction process was further used in the electrical sensing experiments. Since different deposited layers of graphene were obtained in our experimental processes, 60-min-RGO-based biosensors have been found that those immobilized RGO possessed semiconductive property as the layers are less than 11. By contrary, when the layers were above 11, the immobilized RGO would resemble metallic material. In addition, the impedimetric analyses indicated obvious signal responses above 86 kHz and showed a concentration-dependent trend in dopamine sensing in physiological phosphate buffered saline (PBS) using 60-min-RGO-based biosensors which were feature of semiconductor.