Template bacteria-free fabrication of surface imprinted polymer-based biosensor for E. coli detection using photolithographic mimics: Hacking bacterial adhesion

Biosensors and Bioelectronics, vol. 261, pp. 116491

Abstract

As one class of molecular imprinted polymers (MIPs), surface imprinted polymer (SIP)-based biosensors show great potential in direct whole-bacteria detection. Micro-contact imprinting, that involves stamping the template bacteria immobilized on a substrate into a pre-polymerized polymer matrix, is the most straightforward and prominent method to obtain SIP-based biosensors. However, the major drawbacks of the method arise from the requirement for fresh template bacteria and often non-reproducible bacteria distribution on the stamp substrate. Herein, we developed a positive master stamp containing photolithographic mimics of the template bacteria (E. coli) enabling reproducible fabrication of biomimetic SIP-based biosensors without the need for the "real" bacteria cells. By using atomic force and scanning electron microscopy imaging techniques, respectively, the E. coli-capturing ability of the SIP samples was tested, and compared with non-imprinted polymer (NIP)-based samples and control SIP samples, in which the cavity geometry does not match with E. coli cells. It was revealed that the presence of the biomimetic E. coli imprints with a specifically designed geometry increases the sensor E. coli-capturing ability by an "imprinting factor" of about 3. These findings show the importance of geometry-guided physical recognition in bacterial detection using SIP-based biosensors. In addition, this imprinting strategy was employed to interdigitated electrodes and QCM (quartz crystal microbalance) chips. E. coli detection performance of the sensors was demonstrated with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and QCM measurements with dissipation monitoring technique (QCM-D).

Authors 4

1. Dua Özsoylu Aachen Institute of Nano- and Biotechnologies (INB)

   FH Aachen

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Nano- and Biotechnologies (INB), Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Campus Jülich, 52428, Jülich, Germany

2. Fereshteh Aliazizi

   KU Leuven

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Physics and Astronomy, Laboratory for Soft Matter and Biophysics, KU Leuven, B-3001, Leuven, Belgium

3. Patrick Hermann Wagner

   KU Leuven

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Physics and Astronomy, Laboratory for Soft Matter and Biophysics, KU Leuven, B-3001, Leuven, Belgium

4. Michael Josef Schöning corresponding Aachen Institute of Nano- and Biotechnologies (INB)

   FH Aachen · Forschungszentrum Jülich

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Nano- and Biotechnologies (INB), Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Campus Jülich, 52428, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Biological Information Processing (IBI-3), Research Centre Jülich GmbH, 52425, Jülich, Germany. Electronic address: schoening@fh-aachen.de

   Institute of Biological Information Processing (IBI-3), Research Centre Jülich GmbH, 52425, Jülich, Germany

   Institute of Nano- and Biotechnologies (INB), Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Campus Jülich, 52428, Jülich, Germany