Self-cleaning electrochemical protein-imprinting biosensor with a dual-driven switchable affinity for sensing bovine serum albumin

A facile, universal and highly efficient approach for producing a self-cleaning electrochemical protein-imprinting biosensor based on dual stimuli-responsive memory hydrogels via free-radical polymerisation is described. As confirmed by static contact angle and scanning electron microscopy results, the imprinted hydrogels exhibited reversible conformational changes after being simulated by an external electric field and temperature. By exploring the properties of imprinted hydrogels for sensing applications, the electrochemical protein-imprinting biosensor was originally fabricated on a glassy carbon electrode using the drop-casting method. Because of the trigger gates of the temperature and electric field, the biosensor demonstrated excellent self-cleaning behaviours compared with other corresponding electric-field or thermo-responsive imprinting biosensors. Moreover, the prepared biosensor exhibited satisfactory selectivity, good biocompatibility, comparable limits of detection and linearity ranges as well as acceptable stability toward bovine serum albumin. Consequently, the biosensor was successfully employed to simultaneously enrich, detect and extract bovine serum albumin from complex biological samples; the process was dynamic, controllable and harmless to the template under the dual external stimuli. Thus, the proposed biosensor exhibited considerable potential in controlled drug/chemical delivery and smart sensing for bioanalyses involving dual stimuli-responsive behaviours.