COMBINATORIAL POLYMER SYNTHESIS OF SENSORS FOR POLYMER-BASED SENSOR ARRAYS

摘要

A combinatorial synthesis method for fabricating unique families of discrete copolymer sensors and copolymer gradient sensors is provided. The method employs combinatorial copolymer synthesis of discrete monomer or oligomer combinations as well as spatially-varying combinations for generating large numbers of analyte-discriminating sensors from a limited selection of initial monomer and oligomer compositions. The method can be applied to either analyte-specific sensors or sensor arrays or semi-selective sensors and cross-reactive sensor arrays which employ virtually any known physicochemical transduction mechanism for detecting analytes. Since the analyte response characteristics of such copolymer sensors are not limited to a linear proportional ratio of the monomer or oligomer combinations employed, the resulting copolymer sensors provide for increased diversity in sensor and sensor array response characteristics for discriminating between a variety of materials and for detecting and identifying analytes in fluid samples.