A novel biosensing interfacial design produced by assembling nano-Au particles on amine-terminated plasma-polymerized films

A novel biosensing interfacial design strategy has, for the first time, been produced by assembling nano-Au particles on amine-terminated plasma-polymerized films (PPF). A quartz-crystal microbalance (QCM) as a model transducer was deposited with PPF of n-butylamine by use of a glow discharge and then treated with nano-Au particles. The kinetic assembly process and conditions were studied using the real-time-output device and the surface topology of the resulting crystal was characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging. Based on analysis of the experimental data, including the association constant of Au–amine interaction, the assembly mechanism is considered to be partly or even mainly chemical adsorption. Moreover, immobilization of anti-human IgM antibody (IgM Ab), as an example, on the developed PPF-Au interface was investigated. It was found that antibody molecules immobilized by the proposed procedure had higher immunological activity than those immobilized by the conventional glutaraldehyde (GLU) cross-linking procedure or the direct gold-attachment procedure. The newly developed sensor had a better response, with a detection limit of IgM concentration as low as ~1.00 g mL^–1. In particular, the extremely high stability of both PPF and nano-Au monolayer formulated allows the designed biosensing interface to withstand harsh regeneration treatment, making it reusable.