An Alternative Chemical Approach for Development of Polymeric Analytical Platforms

Abstract

This chapter introduces a chemical approach as an alternative solution to solve the problems stated in Chap. 1. Chemically synthesized copolymers made from methyl methacrylate (MMA) and methacrylic acid (MAA) monomers in varied molar ratios of the monomers are proposed for fabrication of novel bioreceptor platforms. Our newly developed materials inherit the presence of surface carboxyl groups (–COOH) from the MAA monomers involved in free-radical polymerization reaction. The concentration of surface functional groups can be tuned by variation of the monomers thus a careful control over surface properties can be achieved. This chapter also reviews the principles of applied characterization techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), water-in-air contact angle (WCA) measurement and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) that have been used for investigation of the developed platforms. Since developed bioreceptor surfaces are design for their application in virus detection, the chapter covers the major topics such as infectious diseases and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Dengue virus (DENV) has been chosen and tested on the developed bioreceptor platforms.