Electrochemical pyrolytic carbon resonators for mass sensing on electrodeposited polymers

In this work, we present the fabrication and characterization of a sensor combining electrochemistry with mass sensing. The sensor was realized using pyrolytic carbon, which is highly suitable as electrode material. A pyrolytic carbon resonator was embedded as working electrode in an electrochemical cell with a three-electrode configuration. Initial characterization using current-voltage (IV) measurements and cyclic voltammetry (CV) demonstrated that the pyrolytic carbon resonators were suitable as electrodes. The resonance frequency of the carbon resonators was measured to be 143.3 ± 3.4 kHz. The conductive properties of pyrolytic carbon were used to deposit Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) on the resonators by galvanostatic electropolymerization. The electrochemical carbon resonators were able to detect few nanograms of PEDOT added by electrochemical deposition.