The Biosensor team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory focuses on rapid diagnosis of pathogens. Single-mode planar optical waveguides enable these efforts due to evanescent field-base sensing—the light field intensity decreases with distance from the surface. Currently, the waveguides are silica based. Plastic devices are less expensive than silica, allowing rapid protyping and production, and paving the way for single-use devices at the point of care. Previously, functional polyethylene glycol self-assembled monolayers were used to modify silica surfaces to produce a functional thin film. This presentation describes the attachment of PEG-modified self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) to cyclic olefin copolymer and acrylic surfaces. An amine terminated silane was vapor deposited onto oxidized plastic surfaces, and further functionalized with activated carboxylic acid terminated PEG chains. Characterization of the films utilized water contact angle, infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Furthermore, fluorescent molecules were conjugated to thin film surfaces and confirmed using ultra violet spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy. Film patterning allowed for analysis of the binding of the fluorescent molecules to the SAMs. The functionalization of plastics surfaces with PEG-modified SAMs will allow for the eventual deployment of developed biosensor technology in low resource settings.

Functional thin films on plastic surfaces for applications in bacterial biosensor

2019 Spring National Meeting

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