Soluble Carbon Nanotubes Used as Building Blocks of Biosensors.

ACEVEDO D., BALACH J., MIRAS M., BARBERO C.

Bariloche

Congreso; “PAN American Advanced Studies Institute on Bioinspired Nanoscience and Molecular Machines”; 2005

National Science Foundation (U.S.) y (CONICET)

We propose to functionalize CNTs using two different synthetic methods to improve solubility and make it suitable for a wide range of applications. One method involves covalent modification by Gomberg reaction of the aromatic rings of the CNT with diazonium salts . The other imply the non-covalent wrapping of soluble conductive polymers In the later method we use combinatorially modified polyanilines where a wide variety of polymers is available. The CNTs were functionalized and their solubility in different solvents were tested. Thin films of CNTs were then deposited by evaporation of the solvent on ITO or glassy carbon electrodes. The electrochemical response hydrogen peroxide, a relevant redox analyte produced by various enzymes, is then tested. The products of the reaction were identified by Differential Electrochemical Mass Spectroscopy (DEMS). Since the functionalized CNTs bear charge, the self assembly of CNT/polyelectrolyte multilayers was also tried. It was found that it is possible to assemble multilayers where the faradaic current of H2O2 oxidation increase with the number of layers, indicating that the layers are connected and active.