Before presenting the experimental results, a brief overview on degradation mechanisms is introduced along with potential solutions to mitigate specific degradation phenomena. The following terms will be used consistently throughout the paper: redox tag current is the amplitude of the faradaic redox tag peak current minus the background current amplitude outside the redox peak in a given voltammetric scan; normalized redoxtag current is the redox-tag current normalized to the first measurement taken; background current is the voltammetric current that would be measured if the aptamer molecules were not distally tagged with a redox reporter including, for example, capacitive currents and competing redox processes such as oxygen reduction; adjusted current is the combined redox tag current and background current of a square-wave voltammogram adjusted such that the minimum current is set to 0 A in the presentation of the voltammogram such that voltammograms can be plotted side by side and compared with greater ease; sensor response is the change in redox tag current due to binding of the target analyte to the aptamer, also known as signal gain, which can either increase or decrease based on the aptamer and the voltammetric time scale. We define these terms here because simpler terms used in the past such as 'sensor signal' can be misleading based on our findings because, as will be seen in the results, a strong redox tag current does not always result in a strong sensor response and therefore is not representative of a 'strong sensor signal'. Lastly, the term scanning as used herein means performing a single complete square-wave voltammetric measurement. The overview of degradation mechanisms begins with Figure , thermally driven monolayer desorption. We speculate and observe at this time that there are two major factors that determine the degree of thermal desorption: monolayer defects and the degree of lateral van der Waals interactions between neighboring monolayer molecules. The molecules residing on the edges of large monolayer defects have reduced van der Waals interactions with adjacent molecules and therefore require less energy for desorption (Figure energy plot).