A novel open circuit potential biosensor (OCPS) composed of a working electrode and a Ag/AgCl reference electrode was designed for in vivo continuous glucose monitoring in this work. The macroporous carbon derived from kenaf stem (KSC) was used to construct a KSC microelectrode (denoted as KSCME) which was subsequently used to load glucose oxidase (GOD) as the working electrode. The resulting GOD/KSCMEs could catalyze the oxidation of glucose directly to result in changes of the open circuit potential (V oc) of the OCPS. The V oc of OCPS was dependent on the glucose concentration, showing a linear range of 0.03-10.0 mM (R = 0.999) with a detection limit of 10 μM. In addition, the OCPS exhibited good selectivity for glucose over other common endogenous interferences. The feasibility of the proposed OCPS for glucose detection in mice skin tumors and normal tissue homogenate samples (in vitro experiment) and rat subcutaneous glucose monitoring (in vivo experiment) was also demonstrated with satisfactory results. The biosensor represents a novel example of a superficial cancer diagnostic device, and the proposed OCPS also provides new ideas for the development of a simple and highly selective device for continuous glucose sensing.
Keywords: Glucose; Glucose oxidase; Macroporous carbon; Open circuit potential.