EAPSI: Development of a Vitamin C Sensor: Anchoring Aqueous Polymers to Glass Substrates

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Measuring the amount of vitamin C present in blood is difficult because of the complex nature of blood, overall cost, amount of time, and instrumentation involved. The award supports research to synthesize a polymer sensing network and anchor it to the surface of a gold coated glass slide, forming a viable chemical sensor for testing levels of vitamin C in bodily fluids. This sensor array will be a reproducible and universally stable analytical tool that is capable of numerous other measurements: the analysis of bodily fluids, testing the cleanliness of water, and instantaneous monitoring of drug levels within the body. The development of these types of proposed sensors could enable point of care measurements for the medical community and the developing world. The research will be conducted in collaboration with Professor Wei-Ssu Liao of National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan.The polymer sensor is formed by an aqueous molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) network. Unlike most MIPs, which form polymer particles due to the high levels of rigid covalent bonds, our MIP is in liquid form because it utilizes less rigid non-covalent bonds to form its sensing network. In addition to being able to bind to the desired molecule (vitamin C), this MIP has a fluorescence response monomer unit within the network. This allows for a visual ?on/off? sensing of the desired molecule. This network is synthesized using a living polymerization technique, thus allowing the polymer solution to have functionalized end groups that can be reduced to bind to any gold surface. The MIP sensor is capable of rapid binding and high selectivity, and when anchored onto a substrate it will create a sensor array for easy and accurate detection of vitamin C. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan.