A versatile strategy, based on the use of an amphiphilic copolymer as a macromonomer, was developed for the preparation of a fully synthetic MIP sensor for protein recognition

For high-performance biosensor development, two key issues to be significantly considered are the effective integration of biological enzymes with electrode transducer and the rapid communication across the biosensing interface. To combat these issues, the present work reported a robust enzymatic biosensor platform based on binary nanoparticles film composed of enzyme-loaded polymeric nanoparticles and conductive silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) by a facile electrophoretic deposition method. First, horseradish peroxidase (HRP) as a model enzyme was coassembled with an amphiphilic and photocross-linkable polypeptide of 7-amino-4-methylcoumarin chemically modified poly(γ-glutamic acid) (γ-PGA−AMC, PGA

A novel water-compatible polymer/carbon nanocomposite with a "beads-on-a-string" nanostructure was developed by a facile one-step co-assembly of an amphiphilic random copolymer with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), and successfully applied as effective electrode material for electrochemical sensing with high sensitivity. An amphiphilic photo-cross-linkable random copolymer poly(AAco-VMc-co-EHA) (PAVE) was synthesized via one-step radical polymerization. Then the PAVE copolymer was coassembled with MWCNTs noncovalently in selective solvent, generating water-compatible and "beads-on-a-string" structured polymer/carbon nanocomposites (PAVE-CNTs NCs) with PAVE nanoparticles as nanosized beads and MWCNTs as micron-long conducting strings. Then PAVE-CNTs NCs were used as electrode material for electrochemical sensing of a model target, namely, paracetamol (PCM). The resultant sensor shows significantly wider linear detection range with lower detection limit than other sensors. The excellent sensing performance was ascribed to large surface area and high electrical conductivity of the "beads-on-a-string" structured PAVE-CNTs NCs. In addition, the sensor was utilized to measure PCM in commercial tablets and urine samples, demonstrating high practicability in medical diagnosis. The synthesis method of this hierarchically structured polymer/carbon nanocomposite is facile with mild working condition and the sensor generation process is green and energy-saving, which will encourage promising applications in chemical sensors like biosensors, and other microelectronic devices.

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