Smartphone Integrated 3D-Printed Standalone Electrochemiluminescence Platform for Cholesterol Detection

Miniaturized 3D printed (3DP) microfluidic devices have attracted the attention of researchers and are widely used in point-of-care testing (POCT). This is due to several advantages such as one-step fabrication, lower installation and maintenance costs, a requirement of a small volume (in microliters or nanoliters) of analytes for reaction, providing excellent selectivity and sensitivity, fast response, and the possibility to make them portable. Keeping such benefits in mind, in this work, a novel 3DP closed bipolar Electrochemiluminescence (3DP-CBPE-ECL) device has been realized to detect cholesterol. The ECL microfluidic device was fabricated using a dual-extruder 3D printer using graphene filament for electrode zones. The 3DP-C-BPE-ECL device was integrated with a smartphone and a 3D printed casing was developed to make it standalone and portable. Using this mini-platform, the detection of cholesterol, was carried out in the linear range of 0.5 to 10 mM with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.12 mM. The smartphone was leveraged to do various tasks, including capturing ECL signals, driving an ECL device, and calculating the intensity of an ECL signal. Finally, based on the obtained results, the developed device has the potential to use in numerous applications such as biomedical, food management and in POCT applications.