Polymer brushes for electrochemical biosensors

A major obstacle in the development of highly sensitive electrochemical biosensors is the issue of electrode fouling due to non-specific adsorption of biomolecules on the electrode/sensor surface. The efficacy of such systems is also limited by the need for high densities of immobilized bioactive molecules on the sensor surface. Biomolecules have a natural tendency to randomly adsorb on solid surfaces, which greatly reduces the bioefficiency and biofunctionality of sensing devices. Polymer brushes have recently attracted considerable interest for generating molecularly defined surfaces for applications in nanotechnology, molecular biology, and biomedical sciences. Two main advantages of using polymer brush systems are the ability to mitigate non-specific adsorption and the creation of tailor-made surfaces to control the immobilization of bioanalytes through specific receptor recognition interactions. The use of polymer brushes allows the formation of uniform surfaces with controlled chemical architecture that exhibits good chemical and thermal stability. In this highlight, we use recent examples to demonstrate the role of polymer brushes in the development of sensitive electrochemical biosensors with low detection limits.