Enzymatic inhibition-based biosensing on nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube electrodes

While previous work has demonstrated the effectiveness of nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) as biogenic electrode materials in first- and second-generation biosensors, this thesis primarily explores enzymatic inhibition-based biosensing schemes on N-CNT electrodes. This type of scheme enables the detection of enzymatic inhibitors, as opposed to enzymatic substrates, making these inhibition-based biosensors much more suitable for the monitoring of environmental pollutants. Presented in this thesis is a biosensor which couples N-CNTs with glucose oxidase (GOx) through spontaneous physical adsorption for the highly sensitive detection of aqueous silver ions. Included is a thorough discussion of the parameters that affect response time as well the biosensor’s aptitude for repeated use. A later chapter presents initial work towards the inhibition-based detection of sucralose, a relatively new environmental pollutant. A bi-enzymatic approach is explored, in which both GOx and invertase are immobilized on an N-CNT modified electrode. Finally, shifting focus from inhibition-schemes, the last remaining chapter investigates the coupling of CNTs and N-CNTs with methylene green (MG), a redox mediator used in second-generation biosensors based on NADH oxidation. Common coupling techniques are examined for their effectiveness in decreasing the overpotential required for NADH oxidation.