The development of molecularly imprinted polymers for sensor and colorimetric assay applications

Abstract

The development of devices capable of sensing the presence or absence of molecules is a staple of the modern day world, with fields such as healthcare, forensics, agriculture and industrial processing relying upon biosensors to operate. The presented work sets focus on the use of Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) as receptor elements in biosensing applications, demonstrating how these synthetic alternatives to traditional affinity reagents are of value. The thesis initially gives a detailed overview of the current MIP landscape, before determining areas of the field that are currently underdeveloped. The ensuing research highlights how these areas can be built upon, deploying MIPs for drug analysis and antibiotic detection. To this end, the use of MIPs in conjugation with a thermal biosensing platform is presented before shifting the research towards the use of these synthetic receptors in simple colorimetric assays designed for the rapid analysis of compounds