The influence of a self-assembled monolayer on the activity of rough gold for glucose oxidation

Gold surface has been roughened by amalgamation and tested for self-assembled monolayer (SAM) formation and glucose oxidation. The rough gold undergoes structural changes at elevated temperatures, which lead to loss of activity for glucose oxidation and lower affinity for the self-assembly. The transformation of “active” into “inactive” surface can be prevented by SAM formation. The SAM modified gold exhibits high activity for glucose oxidation. These results are important especially for those studies, which use rough gold modified by SAM for enzyme immobilisation and further glucose oxidation, since the gold activity itself was so far neglected.