Geometry-on-demand fabrication of conductive microstructures by photoetching and application in hemostasis assessment

Photo-corrosion is a common phenomenon observed in the photocatalytic semiconductor materials, which can seriously harm the photoelectric properties and performances in the energy applications. However, in this paper, we demonstrated that the photo-corrosion effects can be used for the microfabrication of conductive structures on a photocatalytic film like zinc oxide (ZnO), named as “photoetching”. Our results demonstrated that microstructures can be prepared within seconds with a precision at an order of tens of micrometers using our current devices. Different from the previous work, the etching process was achieved free of conducting layer under the ZnO film, avoiding the short-circuit of the conductive micro-patterns and enabling the use for the impedance sensing. We demonstrated the fabricated ZnO microelectrode pairs can work for the electrochemical impedance measurements like assessment of hemostasis integrated with a microfluidic chip. Compared to the noble metal microelectrodes, the ZnO conductive microelectrodes can be fabricated within seconds and the low costs make it possible as a disposable diagnostic device. Besides, the photoetching technique can be performed without a cleanroom reducing the technical barriers, possibly helpful for the low resources areas. We believe the simplicity of device, low costs and fast fabrication can be useful in the relevant fields such as biomedical and energy harvesting, especially for low resources areas.