Amphiphilic block copolymer-based photonic platform towards efficient protein detection

The development of a low complexity fiber optic based protein sensor by functionalizing the surface of silica optical fibers using block copolymers having both hydrophobic poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and hydrophilic poly[2( dimethylamino) ethyl methacrylate] (PDMAEMA) blocks is presented here. The amphiphilic thiol-functionalized PMMA(117)-b-P(DMAEMA(17)-st-TEMA(2)) and vinyl-sulfone PMMA117-b-P(DMAEMA(17)-st-VSTEMA(2)) block copolymers designed and synthesized in this work contain a cationic hydrophilic PDMAEMA block that can electrostatically bind selected oppositely charged proteins and also appropriate functional groups for reversible or non-reversible protein binding, respectively, leading to a refractive index change of the overlayer and hence, enabling the sensing. The developed PMMA(117)-b-PDMAEMA(16)-based platform has been evaluated for bovine serum albumin (BSA) sensing, exhibiting linear response to detected BSA concentrations.