Analytical Chemistry at the Interface Between Materials Science and Biology

Abstract

Likedlessentid sciences, anal~cd chetis~continues toreinvent itself. Moving beyond its traditional roles of identification and quantification, analytical chemistry is now expanding its frontiers into areas previously reserved to other disciplines. This work describes several research efforts that lie at the new interfaces between analytical chemistry and two of these disciplines, namely materials science and biology. In the materials science realm, the search for new materials that may have useful or unique chromatographic properties motivated the synthesis and characterization of electrically conductive sol-gels. In the biology realm, the search for new surface fabrication schemes that would permit or even improve the detection of specific biological reactions motivated the design of miniaturized biological arrays. Collectively, this work represents some of analytical chemistry’s newest forays into these disciplines. The introduction section to this dissertation provides a literature review on several of the key aspects of this work. In advance of the materials science discussion, a brief introduction into electrochemically-modulated liquid chromatography (EMLC) and sol-gel chemistry is provided. In advance of the biological discussions, brief overviews of scanning force microscopy (SFM) and the oxidative chemistry used to construct our biological arrays are provided. This section is followed by four chapters, each of which is presented as a separate manuscript, and focuses on work that describes some of our cross-disciplinary efforts within materials science and biology. This dissertation concludes with a general summary and future prospectus.