Fabrication methods for a gel-based separation-free device for whole blood glucose detection

In this paper, we describe two fabrication methods (well array-based and biopsy punching-based) of gel disks to construct a gel-based point-of-care (POC) diagnosis device for direct colorimetric measurement of human whole blood glucose without any extra blood separation step. The gel disks are made of Polyethylene glycol (PEG) diacrylate (PEG-DA) containing immobilized glucose colorimetric assay reagents. The performances of three types of PEG-DA gel (molecular weight: 575, 3,400, and 10,000) based sensors as well as the two fabrication methods were investigated.•The fabricated devices enabled colorimetric whole blood glucose sensing assay without the need for blood cell separation•The biopsy punching-based gel disk fabrication method provided less variation on the fabricated gel disks.