Immobilization Techniques for Bioreceptors

Summary

The rapid development in the biosensing field in recent years is attributed to new and novel bioreceptors, advancements in their synthesis, and immobilization that lead to better interaction and accurate detection of targets. Bioreceptor immobilization is an important step in the fabrication process of a biosensor. This chapter introduces past and current immobilization techniques used to immobilize antibodies, aptamers, cells, nucleic acids, bacteriophages, enzymes, and imprinted polymers. It focuses on adsorption or electrostatic interaction, covalent binding, entrapment, cross‐linking‐based immobilization techniques, and the battle among them toward the selection of a method to immobilize a specific bioreceptor. It also demonstrated the details and properties of different materials used as supports, such as glass, polymers, hydrogels, self‐assembled monolayer (SAM), metals, nanoparticles, and membranes. It also summarizes the recently reported electrochemical (ECL), optical, and mass‐based biosensors that use different immobilized methods for each receptor in the different biosensing applications. It sheds light on the year‐wise progress made in immobilizing the bioreceptors, articles published using each receptor on different sensing platforms, and the requirements of these methods with their cons and pros.