Poly(vinyl chloride) tubing with covalently bound alkaline phosphatase and alternative approach for investigations of open-tubular bioreactors

An optoelectronic flow-through detectors for active ingredients determination in the pharmaceutical formulations

An optoelectronic flow-through detector for active ingredients determination in pharmaceutical formulations is explained. Two consecutive compact photodetector's devices operating according to light-emitting diodes-solar cells concept where the LEDs acting as a light source and solar cells for measuring the attenuated light of the incident light at 180˚ have been developed. The turbidimetric detector, fabricated of ten light-emitting diodes and five solar cells only, integrated with a glass flow cell has been easily adapted in flow injection analysis manifold system. For active ingredients determination, the developed detector was successfully utilized for the development and validation of an analytical method for warfarin determination in pure and pharmaceutical preparations. The developed method is based on the forming of a white, turbid product as a result of a reaction between the warfarin and semicarbazide which was used as an oxidizing agent. The developed flow-through detector system is semi mechanized, economic in materials consumption, easy to operate and characterized by excellent analytical results. Both developed analytical devices used in two channels flow injection system allow for turbidimetric measurements of warfarin in 0.9-154 μg ml^-1 and 123-1600 μg ml^-1 ranges of concentration, with limits of detections 0.73 μg ml^-1 and 24.66 μg ml^-1 for photodetectors 1& 2 respectively. The turbidity measurement procedure for the current flow system offers to conduct 60 tests per hour of the warfarin which is the most needs of quality control analysis in industrial applications. To ensure the analytical usefulness of the flow system, the warfarin has been analyzed in the real samples with a fully acceptable agreement and a correlation between the results offered by the developed flow system and the official method.

Towards optoelectronic urea biosensors

Integration of immobilized enzymes with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) leads to the development of optoelectronic enzyme-based biosensors. In this work, urease, used as a model enzyme, immobilized in the form of an open-tubular microbioreactor or biosensing membrane that has been integrated with two red LEDs. It forms complete, fiberless, miniaturized, and extremely economic biooptoelectronic devices useful for nonstationary measurements under flow analysis conditions. Both enzyme-based biodevices, operating according to the paired emitter detector diode (PEDD) principle, allow relatively fast, highly sensitive, and well-reproducible urea detection in the millimolar range of concentrations. Potential analytical applications of the developed urea bioPEDDs have been announced. Both presented constructions will be easily adapted for the development of other optoelectronic biosensors exploring various enzyme-based schemes of biodetection.

Light-emitting diodes for analytical chemistry

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are playing increasingly important roles in analytical chemistry, from the final analysis stage to photoreactors for analyte conversion to actual fabrication of and incorporation in microdevices for analytical use. The extremely fast turn-on/off rates of LEDs have made possible simple approaches to fluorescence lifetime measurement. Although they are increasingly being used as detectors, their wavelength selectivity as detectors has rarely been exploited. From their first proposed use for absorbance measurement in 1970, LEDs have been used in analytical chemistry in too many ways to make a comprehensive review possible. Hence, we critically review here the more recent literature on their use in optical detection and measurement systems. Cloudy as our crystal ball may be, we express our views on the future applications of LEDs in analytical chemistry: The horizon will certainly become wider as LEDs in the deep UV with sufficient intensity become available.

Functionalization of polycarbonate with proteins; open-tubular enzymatic microreactors

This paper examines a set of techniques for the immobilization of enzymes on the surface of microchannels fabricated in polycarbonate (PC). Our experiments identify the method that uses combined physico-chemical immobilization on a layer of polyethyleneimine (PEI) as a reproducible vista for the robust immobilization of proteins. As an example, we demonstrate the fabrication, throughput and stability of an open-tubular reactor draped with alkaline phosphatase (ALP, EC 3.1.3.1) as a model enzyme. As PC is suitable for industrial applications the method could potentially be used to immobilize proteins in numbered-up implementations.

Miniaturized optical chemosensor for flow-based assays

A cost-effective, highly compact, and versatile optoelectronic device constructed of two ordinary light emitting diodes compatible with optosensing films has been developed. This fibreless device containing chemoreceptor, semiconductor light source, and detector integrated in a miniaturized flow-through cell of low microliter internal volume works as a complete photometric chemical sensor suitable for detection in flow analysis. The operation of the developed device under nonstationary programmable-flow conditions offered by sequential injection analysis has been demonstrated using Prussian Blue film as a model optical chemoreceptor. The unique spectroelectrochemical properties of the sensing material enable its use for optical sensing of redox species, whereby ascorbic acid and hydrogen peroxide have been chosen as model analytes. The reported SI-sensor system features fast and reproducible determination of both analytes in the submillimolar range of concentrations. The construction concept demonstrated in this work can be easily applied to other kinds of optical sensors based on absorbance sensing films.