Glucose bio-sensing technologies have received increasing attention in the last few decades, primarily due to the fundamental role that glucose metabolism plays in diseases (e.g., diabetes) as well as in environmental monitoring and food industry. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) could offer an alternative means of analysis to a field that is traditionally dominated by enzyme-based devices, posing superior chemical stability, cost-effectiveness, and ease of fabrication. Their integration into sensing devices as recognition elements has been extensively studied with different readout methods such as quartz crystal microbalance or impedance spectroscopy. In this work, a dummy imprinting approach is introduced, describing the synthesis and optimization of a MIP toward the sensing of glucose. Integration of this polymer into a thermally conductive receptor layer was achieved by micro-contact deposition. In essence, the MIP particles are pressed into a polyvinyl chloride adhesive layer using a polydimethylsiloxane stamp. The prepared layer is then evaluated with the so-called heat-transfer method (HTM), allowing the determination of the specificity and the sensitivity of the receptor layer. Furthermore, the selectivity was assessed by analyzing the thermal response after infusion with increasing concentrations of different saccharide analogues in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). The obtained results show a linear range of the sensor of 0.0194−0.3300 mM for the detection of glucose in PBS. The results obtained in this work highlight the applicability of the sensor in terms of non-invasive and environmental monitoring of glucose.

Thermal detection of glucose using a molecularly imprinted polymer as a recognition element

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