Bioinspired design of a polymer-based biohybrid sensor interface

•Synthesis of polymerizable amino acid derivatives.•Incorporation of amino acid derivatives into a polymer-based biohybrid interface.•Constructing of generic bioinspired analytical tools.•Ion-mediated supramolecular self-assembly on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM).

The key step in the construction of efficient and selective analytical separations or sensors is the design of the recognition interface. Biomimicry of the recognition features typically found in biological molecules, using amino acids, peptides and nucleic acids, provides plausible opportunities to integrate biological molecules or their active sites into a synthetic polymeric backbone. Given the basic role of functional amino acids in biorecognition, we focused on the synthesis of polymerizable amino acid derivatives and their incorporation into a polymer-based biohybrid interface to construct generic bioinspired analytical tools. We also utilized polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a sacrificial polymer to adjust the porosity of these biohybrid interfaces. The surface morphologies of the interfaces on gold electrodes were characterized by using scanning electron (SEM) and atomic force (AFM) microscopies. The electrochemical behavior of the polymeric films was systematically investigated using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) to demonstrate the high affinity of the biohybrid interfaces for Cu(II) ions. The presence of macropores also significantly improved the recognition performance of the interfaces while enhancing interactions between the target [Cu(II) ions] and the functional groups. As a final step, we showed the applicability of the proposed analytical platform to create a Cu(II) ion-mediated supramolecular self-assembly on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) electrode surface in real time.