Non-enzymatic glucose sensing on long and short diamond nanowire electrodes

In this paper the fabrication of micrometer long boron-doped diamond nanowire (L-BDD NWs) electrodes is reported. The diamond nanowires were obtained by a maskless reactive ion etching process with oxygen plasma using 15 μm thick polycrystalline boron-doped diamond (BDD) films as starting material. The resulting nanowire interfaces showed enhanced electrochemical activity towards the direct electrochemical detection of glucose under strong basic (pH 12) condition when compared to flat BDD and short nanowires (S-BDD NWs). The robust response of these nanostructures with a detection limit of 60 μM and a linear range up to 8 mM and the ease of formation make L-BDD NWs a promising platform for real time applications.