Carbon Substrates: A Stable Foundation for Biomolecular Arrays

Abstract

Since their advent in the early 1990s, microarray technologies have developed into a powerful and ubiquitous platform for biomolecular analysis. Microarrays consist of three major elements: the substrate upon which they are constructed, the chemistry employed to attach biomolecules, and the biomolecules themselves. Although glass substrates and silane-based attachment chemistries are used for the vast majority of current microarray platforms, these materials suffer from severe limitations in stability, due to hydrolysis of both the substrate material itself and of the silyl ether linkages employed for attachment. These limitations in stability compromise assay performance and render impossible many potential microarray applications. We describe here a suite of alternative carbon-based substrates and associated attachment chemistries for microarray fabrication. The substrates themselves, as well as the carbon-carbon bond-based attachment chemistries, offer greatly increased chemical stability, enabling a myriad of novel applications.

Modulation of Protein Fouling and Interfacial Properties at Carbon Surfaces via Immobilization of Glycans Using Aryldiazonium Chemistry

“…Carbon nanomaterials, such as nanotubes and nanodiamonds, have also received much attention as delivery agents for in vivo imaging and sensing 8 9 . Finally, materials such as diamond electrodes, carbon coatings and carbon nanofibers are routinely used for in vivo and in vitro bioanalytical chemistry 10 11 . For all of these applications it is critical to achieve control over interfacial interactions of the carbon solid surface with proteins in solution, to avoid unspecific adsorption that might result in undesirable cell-surface events, or in blocking of sensing/binding sites 12 13 14 15 .…”

Recent Advances in Biomaterial‐Based High‐Throughput Platforms

“…Microarrays have been fabricated on planar (glassy, crystalline, or amorphous) carbon substrates or carbon nanoparticles like nanotubes. [ 10 ] However, the usage of these substrates has mainly been limited to oligonucleotides and protein microarrays. [ 11 ] The popularity of PEG‐based surfaces for biomaterial based‐cell microarray could be rendered to the tunable mechanical property of PEG.…”

Substrate Materials for Biomolecular Immobilization within Electrochemical Biosensors

“…For example, recent review articles already discuss the potential applications of biosensors to agriculture [11,12], food safety [11,13,14], environmental monitoring [11,[14][15][16], sports medicine [17], chemical and biological warfare prevention [18,19], and healthcare [20,21], including glucose management [6] and early cancer detection [22,23]. In addition, recent review articles have been published on the chemical methods and strategies employed for electrode biofunctionalization [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Variation in sensor performance with biofunctionalization method is often observed [39,40].…”