Abstract
Designing Molecularly Imprinted Polymers for sensing proteins is still a somewhat empirical process due to the inherent complexity of protein imprinting. Based on Bovine Serum Albumin as a model analyte, we explored the influence of a range of experimental parameters on the final sensor responses. The optimized polymer contains 70% cross linker. Lower amounts lead to higher sensitivity, but also sensor response times substantially increase (to up to 10 h) at constant imprinting effect (signal ratio MIP/NIP on quartz crystal microbalance—QCM). However, by shifting the polymer properties to more hydrophilic by replacing methacrylic acid by acrylic acid, part of the decreased sensitivity can be recovered leading to appreciable sensor responses. Changing polymer morphology by bulk imprinting and nanoparticle approaches has much lower influence on sensitivity.
Highlights
Recent years have seen very strong increase in everyday application of biotechnology products as well as diagnostics shifting from centralized laboratories to distributed measurements
molecularly imprinted polymers (MIP) can be combined with mass-sensitive quartz micro balances (QCM) [3] to create powerful sensors for various types of analytes [4,5,6] that can be applied in real life conditions [7]
In a first step we assessed the influence of the cross linker ratio on sensor responses
Summary
Recent years have seen very strong increase in everyday application of biotechnology products as well as diagnostics shifting from centralized laboratories to distributed measurements This increases the need for quality control and suitable receptors for the respective sensor systems. Several imprinting techniques for creating protein MIPs have been developed [8], there is not yet a systematic procedure for protein imprinting This can be explained by several challenges one faces in protein imprinting [9]: Diffusion of larger bio species into the polymer is inhibited. The aim of this paper is to systematically examine various polymer properties, such as cross linker ratio and functional monomer, and their influence on sensitivity and response time.
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