Contact
    Start Publications Engineering of Surface Chemistry for Enhanced Sensitivity in ...
    ←  Publication Finder
    Attension

    Engineering of Surface Chemistry for Enhanced Sensitivity in Nanoporous Interferometric Sensing Platforms

    Year: 2017

    Journal: ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, Volume 9, nov-15, page 8929–8940

    Authors: Law, Cheryl Suwen; Sylvia, Georgina M.; Nemati, Madieh; Yu, Jingxian; Losic, Dusan; Abell, Andrew D.; Santos, Abel

    Organizations: Australian Research Council (ARC) [DE140100549, CE140100003, DP120101680, FT110100711]; School of Chemical Engineering (UoA)

    Keywords: nanoporous anodic alumina; reflectometric interference spectroscopy; surface chemistry engineering; optical sensing; sensing performance

    We explore new approaches to engineering the surface chemistry of interferometric sensing platforms based on nanoporous anodic alumina (NAA) and reflectometric interference spectroscopy (RIfS). Two surface engineering strategies are presented, namely (i) selective chemical functionalization of the inner surface of NAA pores with amine-terminated thiol molecules and (ii) selective chemical functionalization of the top surface of NAA with dithiol molecules. The strong molecular interaction of Au3+ ions with thiol-containing functional molecules of alkane chain or peptide character provides a model sensing system with which to assess the sensitivity of these NAA platforms by both molecular feature and surface engineering. Changes in the effective optical thickness of the functionalized NAA. photonic films (i.e., sensing principle), in response to gold ions, are monitored in real-time by RIfS. 6-Amino-l-hexanethiol (inner surface) and 1,6-hexanedithiol (top surface), the most sensitive functional molecules from approaches i and ii, respectively, were combined into a third sensing strategy whereby the NAA. platforms are functionalized on both the top and inner surfaces concurrently. Engineering of the surface according to this approach resulted in an additive enhancement in sensitivity of up to 5-fold compared to previously reported systems. This study advances the rational engineering of surface chemistry for interferometric sensing on nanoporous platforms with potential applications for real-time monitoring of multiple analytes in dynamic environments.
    View publication