Pyrolytic carbon electrodes for bioelectrochemical applications

Carbon represents an interesting electrode material due to its favourable material properties such as biocompatibility and high chemical resistance. For this reason it has been widely used for several electrochemical applications including electroanalytical chemistry, fuel cells or electrocatalysis. In particular, among the available carbon allotropes, pyrolytic carbon represents a promising material for various applications such as electrochemical sensors, capacitors, batteries or microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Pyrolytic carbon can be obtained from the pyrolysis of lithographically patterned photoresists in a fabrication process called carbon MEMS (CMEMS) which is simple, highly reproducible and offers the possibility to customize the electrode design. Due to its biocompatibility, pyrolytic carbon has been previously used as biosensor and for cell studies. The aim of the research work of this thesis was the fabrication and optimization of two dimensional (2D) and three dimensional (3D) pyrolytic carbon electrodes for bioelectrochemical applications.
The research presented in this thesis focused on: (1) the optimization of the pyrolysis process used to obtain the pyrolytic carbon electrodes in order to obtain improved performances in terms of conductivity and electrochemical behaviour. (2) The investigation of new polymer templates for the fabrication of new carbon structures. (3) The development of a platform for electrochemical monitoring of 2D bone cell cultures using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and square wave voltammetry (SWV). (4) The design and fabrication of 3D electrodes for the development of a 3D in vitro model for the support of bone diseases research and for preliminary studies regarding use of pyrolytic carbon as anode material in biophotovoltaic cells.