Département de chimie moléculaire

Nanosized fibers contg. carbon nanotube (CNT) were produced by electrospinning from a DMF soln. contg. CNT and polyacrilonitrile (PAN). The resulting fibers form a felt like fiber tissue that was used as an electrode. The nitrile groups of these fibers were chem. reduced to amines groups that were protonated at pH 5. The resulting pos. charged nanofibers swell in aq. solns. increasing the exposed surface of CNT and facilitating the diffusion of small mols. and ions to the conducting CNTs. The electrochem. behavior and the morphol. of as prepd. and reduced nanofibers were characterized by cyclic voltammetry and SEM (SEM) resp. In addn., the influence of the redn. process detg. the amt. of amino groups, was investigated. The biofunctionalization of the nanofiber tissue electrodes was carried out by activation of the amino groups via incubation in glutaraldehyde vapor. Then, an enzyme model, polyphenol oxidase (PPO), was chem. grafted onto the nanofiber surface. The efficient covalent binding of PPO onto PAN-NH2-CNT electrodes (1 × 1 cm size), was exemplified through the electro-enzymic detection of catechol. The resulting sensitivity and max. current values at satd. catechol concn. are 118 mA mol-1 L and 10.66 $μ$A resp., with a detection limit of 0.9 $μ$mol L-1. [on SciFinder(R)]