A Combined Physical–Chemical Polymerization Process for Fabrication of Nanoparticle–Hydrogel Sensing Materials

Hydrogel-Based Optical Ion Sensors: Principles and Challenges for Point-of-Care Testing and Environmental Monitoring

Hydrogel is a unique family of biocompatible materials with growing applications in chemical and biological sensors. During the past few decades, various hydrogel-based optical ion sensors have been developed aiming at point-of-care testing and environmental monitoring. In this Perspective, we provide an overview of the research field including topics such as photonic crystals, DNAzyme cross-linked hydrogels, ionophore-based ion sensing hydrogels, and fluoroionophore-based optodes. As the different sensing principles are summarized, each strategy offers its advantages and limitations. In a nutshell, developing optical ion sensing hydrogels is still in the early stage with many opportunities lying ahead, especially with challenges in selectivity, assay time, detection limit, and usability.

Hydrogel-Based Colloidal Photonic Crystal Devices for Glucose Sensing

Diabetes, a common epidemic disease, is increasingly hazardous to human health. Monitoring body glucose concentrations for the prevention and therapy of diabetes has become very important. Hydrogel-based responsive photonic crystal (PC) materials are noninvasive options for glucose detection. This article reviews glucose-sensing materials/devices composed of hydrogels and colloidal photonic crystals (CPCs), including the construction of 2D/3D CPCs and 2D/3D hydrogel-based CPCs (HCPCs). The development and mechanisms of glucose-responsive hydrogels and the achieved technologies of HCPC glucose sensors were also concluded. This review concludes by showing a perspective for the future design of CPC glucose biosensors with functional hydrogels.

Luminescent photonic crystals with multi-functionality and tunability

We develop a general method to incorporate aggregation-induced emission luminogens into photonic crystals (PCs) and the resulting luminescent PCs display diverse structural colors in response to water stimulation.

The marriage of reflected light originating from photonic crystals (PCs) and emitted light would create miraculous phenomena. However, traditional luminophores cannot avoid the problem of aggregation-caused quenching. To solve this problem, we develop a general method to incorporate aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) into PCs via physical absorption or chemical reaction. The resulting luminescent PCs display diverse structural colors in response to water stimulation, due to the swelling of the aqueous medium. Such a water-tunable photonic band gap red-shift has the ability to modulate the AIEgen emission, as well as narrowing its full width at half maximum (FWHM), which allows the luminescent PC to behave as a smart intramolecular filter that is capable of creating arbitrary light from only one material. In addition, the filter is believed to modulate the broad emission spectra of AIEgens arising from different conformations. Furthermore, the luminescent PC can respond to ethanol stimulation due to two factors: (a) swelling of the aqueous medium (external tuning); and (b) expansion of nanoparticles (internal tuning). By exploiting the synergy of the external-internal tuning, the emission wavelength and intensity can be finely changed. Both the water- and ethanol-tunable emission shift fit to a linear relationship, and thus the luminescent PC could be able to quantitatively detect humidity in the environment and alcohol in wine.

Optically diffracting hydrogels for screening kinase activity in vitro and in cell lysate: impact of material and solution properties

Optically diffracting films based on hydrogel-encapsulated crystalline colloidal arrays have considerable utility as sensors for detecting enzymaticphosphorylation and, thus, in screening small molecule modulators of kinases. In this work, we have investigated the impact of hydrogel properties, as well as the role of the ionic character of the surrounding environment, on the optical sensitivity of kinase responsive crystalline colloidal array-containing hydrogels. In agreement with a model of hydrogel swelling, the optical sensitivity of such materials increased as the shear modulus and the Flory-Huggins interaction parameter between polymer and solvent decreased. Additionally, elimination of extraneous charges in the polymer backbone by exploiting azide-alkyne click chemistry to functionalize the hydrogels with a peptide substrate for protein kinase A further enhanced the sensitivity of the optically diffracting films. Increasing peptide concentration and, in turn, immobilized charge within the hydrogel network was shown to increase the optical response over a range of ionic strength conditions. Ultimately, we showed that, by tuning the hydrogel and solution properties, as little as 0.1 U/μL protein kinase A could be detected in short reaction times (i.e., 2 h), which is comparable to conventional biochemical kinase assays. We further showed that this approach can be used to detect protein kinase A activity in lysate from HEK293 cells. The sensitivity of the resulting films, coupled with the advantages of photonic crystal based sensors (e.g., label free detection), makes this approach highly attractive for screening enzymatic phosphorylation.

Co-deposition motif for constructing inverse opal photonic crystals with pH sensing

An exfoliated polyacrylamide (PAM) inverse opal film has been fabricated based on a co-deposition motif.

A novel opal closest-packing photonic crystal for naked-eye glucose detection

A novel opal closest-packing (OCP) photonic crystal (PC) is successfully prepared for naked-eye glucose detection. This PC is fabricated via a vertical convective self-assembly method with a new type of monodisperse microsphere polymerized by co-monomers, namely, methyl methacrylate (MMA), N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA), and 3-acrylamidophenylboronic acid (AAPBA). The OCP PC has high stability and periodically-ordered structure, showing the desired structural color. The proposed PC material displays a red shift and reduced reflection intensity when detecting glucose molecules. The red-shift wavelength reaches 75 nm, which clearly changes the structural color from brilliant blue to emerald green. This visually distinguishable color change facilitates the detection of the glucose concentrations from 3 to 20 mm, which demonstrates the potential of the opal PC material for naked-eye detection. Thus, the novel PMMA–NIPA–AAPBA OCP PC is a simply prepared and sensitive material, which shows promising use in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus and in real-time monitoring of diabetes. Different types of appropriated recognition groups are expected to be introduced into the 3D OCP PC to form new functional materials or chemical sensors, which will extensively broaden the PC material application.

25th anniversary article: ordered polymer structures for the engineering of photons and phonons

The engineering of optical and acoustic material functionalities via construction of ordered local and global architectures on various length scales commensurate with and well below the characteristic length scales of photons and phonons in the material is an indispensable and powerful means to develop novel materials. In the current mature status of photonics, polymers hold a pivotal role in various application areas such as light-emission, sensing, energy, and displays, with exclusive advantages despite their relatively low dielectric constants. Moreover, in the nascent field of phononics, polymers are expected to be a superior material platform due to the ability for readily fabricated complex polymer structures possessing a wide range of mechanical behaviors, complete phononic bandgaps, and resonant architectures. In this review, polymer-centric photonic and phononic crystals and metamaterials are highlighted, and basic concepts, fabrication techniques, selected functional polymers, applications, and emerging ideas are introduced.

Photonic crystal structures with tunable structure color as colorimetric sensors

Colorimetric sensing, which transduces environmental changes into visible color changes, provides a simple yet powerful detection mechanism that is well-suited to the development of low-cost and low-power sensors. A new approach in colorimetric sensing exploits the structural color of photonic crystals (PCs) to create environmentally-influenced color-changeable materials. PCs are composed of periodic dielectrics or metallo-dielectric nanostructures that affect the propagation of electromagnetic waves (EM) by defining the allowed and forbidden photonic bands. Simultaneously, an amazing variety of naturally occurring biological systems exhibit iridescent color due to the presence of PC structures throughout multi-dimensional space. In particular, some kinds of the structural colors in living organisms can be reversibly changed in reaction to external stimuli. Based on the lessons learned from natural photonic structures, some specific examples of PCs-based colorimetric sensors are presented in detail to demonstrate their unprecedented potential in practical applications, such as the detections of temperature, pH, ionic species, solvents, vapor, humidity, pressure and biomolecules. The combination of the nanofabrication technique, useful design methodologies inspired by biological systems and colorimetric sensing will lead to substantial developments in low-cost, miniaturized and widely deployable optical sensors.