Integrating inorganic materials, that show great potential for sensing application, into platforms that are suitable for the industrial production of cheap, non-invasive sensors is of great importance for their broad implementation. In our recent open access paper in Materials Research Express, we show the successful integration of copper oxide based electrodes for glucose sensing on printed circuit board (PCB) technology. Together with collaborators at the University of Bath led by Dr Despina Moschou we could show that direct oxidation on PCB compatible substrates is possible and how production parameters including annealing duration and temperature influence the surface morphology and chemistry as well as influencing the resulting electrochemical sensing properties.

The work in the paper is based predominantly on the Masters research of Shijia Liu and Ayse Ay, who did their Masters projects as part of their MSc in Advanced Materials Science and Engineering degrees in the group in the academic year 2017/18. The research also included the involvement of two UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme) students, Qiaochu Luo and Xiangqi Hu.