A disposable microfluidic biochip with on-chip molecularly imprinted biosensors for optical detection of anesthetic propofol

This paper presents a disposable microfluidic biochip with on-chip molecularly imprinted biosensors for optical detection of anesthetic propofol. So far, the methods to detect anesthetic propofol in hospitals are liquid chromatography (LC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy (GC–MS). These conventional instruments are bulky, expensive, and not ease of access. In this work, a novel plastic microfluidic biochip with on-chip anesthetic biosensor has been developed and characterized for rapid detection of anesthetic propofol. The template-molecule imprinted polymers were integrated into microfluidic biochips to be used for detecting anesthetic propofol optically at 655 nm wavelength after the reaction of propofol with color reagent. Experimental results show that the sensitivity of the microfluidic biochip with on-chip molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) biosensor is 6.47 mV/(ppm mm2). The specific binding of MIP to non-imprinted polymer (NIP) is up to 456%. And the detection limit of the microsystem is 0.25 ppm with a linear detection range from 0.25 to 10 ppm. The disposable microfluidic biochip with on-chip anesthetic biosensor using molecularly imprinted polymers presented in this work showed excellent performance in separation and sensing of anesthetic propofol molecules. While compared to large-scale conventional instruments, the developed microfluidic biochips with on-chip MIP biosensors have the advantages of compact size, high sensitivity, high selectivity, low cost, and fast response.