Fabrication Of Chemosensors Based On Molecularly Imprinted Photonic Hydrogel

In natural world, it is ubiquitous that materials have multicomponent and hierarchical structure, which is developed by natural evolution. However, it is a challenge to fabricate such materials with desirable functions by synthesis.Three-Dimensional Ordered Macroporous Materials (3DOM) can be made directly and effectively form colloidal crystal templating method, which has high surface areas, interconnected structures and bicontinuous structures. Ordered structures enable the intensive interreactions with visible and infrared lights and exhibit multicolor,which can be called"photonic crystals". These characteristics allow 3DOM photonic crystals the ideal structure frame for fabricating chemical or biological sensors. On the other hand, molecular imprinting technique is an effective way to synthesize artificial receptor. Matching in the shape, binding sites and size, nano-cavities made by molecular imprinting show high selectivity for imprinted molecules.Based on photonic crystal and molecular imprinting technique, here we fabricated two kinds of sensors for biological molecule cholic and herbicide atrazine, and characterized their sensoring properties. The presented approach is characterized with three important and attractive features. First, this is a general and highly accessible method for producing highly affinitive and molecule-specific sensors. Second, due to a rational hierarchal structure resulted from colloidal crystal templating and molecular imprinting techniques, the fabricated cholic acid sensors can simultaneously possess a serials of desirable features, including high sensitivity and specificity, quick response, and well regenerative ability and reproducibility. More importantly, these sensors can operate easily and directly generate readable colorimetric optical signals to report recognition events without any treatments for analytes (label free). Therefore, this special hierarchical structure is suitable for fabricating sensors, which can hold desirable sensoring properties, and this approach laid out a promising way to detect substances with very low concentrations.