Chemical and Biosensing Using Enzyme Inspired Electropolymerized MIPS and Devices

Bioinspired macromolecules can be prepared by bio-conjugation or de-novo biopolymer substitutes. The lock-and-key templating process can mimic molecular complexes inspired by biological enzyme-substrate interactions. Using functional monomers that can be electrochemically polymerized enables the formation of cross-linked polymer films with cavities that enable high-binding assays of chemical and biological analytes. This talk will show the effective and bio-inspired artificial enzymes for detecting chemical and biological analytes. We will focus on demonstrating electropolymerized molecularly imprinted polymer (E-MIP) sensor elements and their ability to utilize transduction methods such as surface plasmon resonance (SPR) spectroscopy to enable high sensitivity and selectivity. The monomer and molecular design for optimized analyte interaction enables effective templating protocols in an electrically conducting polymer matrix with tunable redox states to enable a high volume of analyte-cavity sites. Optimized electropolymerization methods are important for film deposition and surface characterization based on SPM, XPS, and other microscopic and spectroscopic methods to confirm surface specificity. Several analytes, including drugs, organic pollutants, nerve agents, and epitopes of larger proteins. This was recently demonstrated in the detection of dengue-expressed proteins for disease diagnostics.