Abstract
AbstractCombining molecularly imprinted photoresists (MIPhs), photolithography and electrochemical techniques, a multi-array sensor using MIPhs as the recognition element has been fabricated. Two kinds of MIPhs, norbornene and acrylic MIPhs, have been developed in this study. In comparison with MIPhs using norbornene copolymers as the functional polymers, the acrylic MIPh could adhere strongly to Pt surface and has a good resolution of 20 μm. Acrylic MIPhs were utilized to construct MIPh-based chips, which can discriminate albuterol from the interfering analogies, such as clenbuterol and terbutaline. Excellent selectivity toward these analytes was obtained for the molecularly imprinted chips as compared to molecularly non-imprinted chips, bare Pt chips and glassy carbon electrodes. Furthermore, the peak currents of albuterol measured on molecularly imprinted chips have good linear relations with its concentrations in the two ranges of 1 μM to 50 μM with the correlation coefficient (R) of 0.9995, and 100 μM to 200 μM with R of 0.9999 by differential pulse voltammetry. The surface morphologies of molecularly imprinted and non-imprinted layers observed by scanning electron microscope and atomic force microscope displayed significantly different features. Because of small size, light weight and high specificity towards the template molecule, the multi-array sensor developed in this work is potentially useful for determining trace electroactive species either in vitro or in vivo.In the other part, TiO2 has been successfully immobilized on carbon nanocapsules (CNC) and Fe-filled CNC (Fe-CNC) using simple sol-gel methods. The high resolution TEM images indicated that the immobilization of TiO2 on Fe-CNC was driven primarily by heterogeneous coagulation, whereas surface nucleation and growth was the dominant mechanism for immobilizing TiO2 on acid-functionalized hollow CNC. The TiO2 immobilized on both CNC and Fe-CNC exhibited anatase phase as revealed by the X-ray diffraction patterns. In comparison with free TiO2, TiO2-coated CNC and TiO2-coated Fe-CNC displayed a good performance in the removal of NO gas under UV exposure. The TiO2-coated CNC exhibited effective quenching on the emission of a light-emitting conjugated polymer. This may imply that TiO2 immobilized on hollow CNC or Fe-CNC could promote the charge transfer for effective photodegradation of NO and quenching of the emission from conjugated polymer. Due to the advantages of easy recycling and good photocatalytic efficiency, the novel magnetic photocatalyst developed here has the potential in photocatalytic applications for pollution prevention.