Electrochemical Microbiosensor for Detecting COVID-19 in a Patient Sample Based on Gold Microcuboids Pattern

Waleed A El-Said; Abdullah S Al-Bogami; Wael Alshitari; Deia A El-Hady; Tamer S Saleh; Mohamed A El-Mokhtar; Jeong-Woo Choi

doi:10.1007/s13206-021-00030-3

Electrochemical Microbiosensor for Detecting COVID-19 in a Patient Sample Based on Gold Microcuboids Pattern

Biochip J. 2021;15(3):287-295. doi: 10.1007/s13206-021-00030-3. Epub 2021 Aug 9.

Authors

Waleed A El-Said¹, Abdullah S Al-Bogami¹, Wael Alshitari¹, Deia A El-Hady¹, Tamer S Saleh¹, Mohamed A El-Mokhtar², Jeong-Woo Choi³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, College of Science, University of Jeddah, P.O. Box 80327, Jeddah, 21589 Saudi Arabia.
² Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, 71515 Egypt.
³ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sogang University, 35 Baekbeom-Ro, Mapo-Gu, Seoul, 04107 Republic of Korea.

Abstract

As continues increasing the COVID-19 infections, there is an urgent need for developing fast, simple, selective, and accurate COVID-19 biosensors. A highly uniform gold (Au) microcuboid pattern was used as a microelectrode that allowed monitoring a small analyte. The electrochemical biosensor was used to monitor the COVID-19 S protein within a concentration range from 100 to 5 pmol L^-1; it showed a lower detection limit of 276 fmol L^-1. Finally, the developed COVID-19 sensor was used to detect a positive sample from a human patient obtained through a nasal swab; the results were confirmed using the PCR technique. The results showed that the SWV technique showed high sensitivity towards detecting COVID-19 and good efficiency for detecting COVID-19 in a positive human sample.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cyclic voltammetry; Electrochemical biosensor; Gold microelectrode; Nasal swab; Raman spectroscopy; Square wave voltammetry.