Plastic antibodies as chemical sensor material for atrazine detection

Self-organization of monomers around template molecules, in bulk MIP generation, leads to selective molecular imprints with high sensitivity. Employing the host–guest chemistry, novel artificial receptors were fabricated via in situ MIP synthesis directly on gold electrodes of piezoelectric transducers (quartz crystal microbalance, QCM). The resultant label-free and robust biomimetic sensing material shows reversible as well as selective sensor responses for chlorotriazines moieties with minor structural differences. A detection limit of 20 ppb for atrazine was attained while showing selectivity up to 9 times higher than its metabolites des-ethyl-atrazine (DEA), des-isopropyl-atrazine (DIA), des-ethyl-des-isopropyl-atrazine (DEDIA) and structural analogues like simazine (SIM) and propazine (PRO). Furthermore, imprinted nanoparticles give linear characteristics over the wide range and show no saturation effects in comparison to bulk materials.