We have reported a sensing platform comprising of agar ionogel (IGs) made in ionic liquid solutions (1-octyl-3-methyl imidazolium chloride [C8mim][Cl] and 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium chloride [C2mim][Cl]) and used it for glucose oxidase (GOx) immobilization for glucose detection. The ionogels were deposited onto indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass plate using the drop casting technique. These Agar-[C8mim][Cl]/ITO (Ag-C8/ITO) and Agar-[C2mim][Cl]/ITO (Ag-C2/ITO) substrates were used for immobilization of GOx, which was selected as a model enzyme to investigate its interaction with these electrodes using electrochemical techniques. Structural and morphological studies of these GOx/Ag-C8/ITO and GOx/Ag-C2/ITO electrodes were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and electrochemical techniques (CV). These GOx/Ag-C8/ITO and GOx/Ag-C2/ITO bioelectrodes exhibited improved glucose detection capability in the concentration range of 0.27-16.7 mM and 0.28-5.6 mM with sensitivity ≈ 4.1µA mM -1 /cm -2 and 14.6 µA mM -1 cm -2 , respectively. The value of apparent Michaelis-Menten constant (K m ) was 0.023 mM and 0.0007 mM for the aforesaid two cases respectively. It is shown that, customization of agar hydrogels in green solvent medium widens the scope of its potential applications as glucose sensing in real samples.
IntroductionRecently, ionic liquids (ILs) have received much attention as materials with enormous practical applications because of their unique properties that include exceptional ionic conductivity, biocompatibility, electrochemical, thermal stability and non-flammability making them particularly attractive in the development of electrochemical biodevices with long-term stability.As variability in their application potential arises from the availability of a range of ILs molecules with various combinations of anions, cations, hydrophilic head groups, and hydrophobic chain lengths [1-6]. It has been adequately realized that ILs are the green solvents of the future. The novel and remarkable attributes of ILs can be realized from the following facts:(i) ILs can dissolve cellulose [7], (ii) maintain biological activity of DNA in solutions over an extended period [8] and (iii) inhibit pH dependent aggregation of proteins [9]. Moreover ionic liquids are room-temperature molten salts that are increasingly used in electrochemical devices, such as in batteries, fuel cells, and biosensors [10]. The ILs has been used for the different biosensing application because ILs increases the stability of biomolecules and also improves the sensitivity and response time of biosensor [11-12]. ILs is being used for development of different electrochemical biosensor for clinical diagnosis including glucose detection. Liu et al. have reported hydrolysis of tetraethyl orthosilicate in 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetra-fluoroborate (BMIMBF4) based hydrogen peroxide electrochemical biosensor [13]. They have reported that in BMIMBF4, IL improved the film quality without forming a...