Sensitivity Enhancement of Bead-based Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (BEIS) biosensor by electric field-focusing in microwells

This paper reports a novel electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) biosensors that uses magnetic beads trapped in a microwell array to improve the sensitivity of conventional bead-based EIS (BEIS) biosensors. Unloading the previously measured beads by removing the magnetic bar enables the BEIS sensor to be used repeatedly by reloading it with new beads. Despite its recyclability, the sensitivity of conventional BEIS biosensors is so low that it has not attracted much attentions from the biosensor industry. We significantly improved the sensitivity of the BEIS system by introducing of a microwell array that contains two electrodes (a working electrode and a counter electrode) to concentrate the electric field on the surfaces of the beads. We confirmed that the performance of the BEIS sensor in a microwell array using an immunoassay of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in PBS buffer and human plasma. The experimental results showed that a low concentration of PSA (a few tens or hundreds of fg/mL) were detectable as a ratio of the changes in the impedance of the PBS buffer or in human plasma. Therefore, our BEIS sensor with a microwell array could be a promising platform for low cost, high-performance biosensors for applications that require high sensitivity and recyclability.