Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Commons^™

Activity Preservation Of Plasmonic Biosensors With A Metal-Organic Framework, Lu Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Antibody-antigen recognition enables antibody-conjugated nanostructures to serve as plasmonic biosensors with tunable specificity. However due to the instability of antibodies, these biosensors are susceptible to changes in the environment such as heat and aridity, leading to constraints on the transportation and handling of these sensors. Here we establish a method using a metal-organic framework crystal to preserve biosensor activity under severe environmental conditions, including exposure to high temperatures, an organic solvent and a proteolytic agent. After zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) crystals formed for 12 hours on a biosensor of gold nanorods conjugated with a model antibody, rabbit IgG, 80% of …