Hydrogel Antifouling Platform with Highly Specific H+-Responsiveness: Application in Microalgae-Based Carbon Capture

Abstract

Timely and accurate monitoring of H+ changes is of great significance for the assessment of biological carbon capture efficiency. Herein, a DNA hydrogel-based antifouling electrochemical platform was constructed for highly specific responsive H+ due to a synergistic effect of polyacrylamide skeleton and the anchored C-rich single-stranded DNA. Herein, the porous structure and unique properties of the hydrogel make the sensing platform have the size exclusion effect and hydration layer to resist interface fouling. Impressively, both the polyacrylamide skeleton and the anchored C-rich single-stranded DNA (S3) can specifically react with H+, thus making the sensing platform with ability highly sensitive and specific response to H+. As a proof concept, the proposed platform is further applied in monitoring H+ changes induced by carbonic anhydrase (CA) catalysis CO2 hydrated during microalgae-based carbon capture procedure to investigate microalgae extracellular CA activity. The proposed sensing platform exhibited a wide linear detection range for CA activity (0.35U-3500U) with a low limit of detection of 0.024U and excellent antifouling capability and sensing performance in complex Chlorella samples. This work provides a new method for assistly assessing biological carbon capture efficiency, which also can used in other lives CA activity detection.

Keywords: Electrochemical sensors, Antifouling, Hydrogel, H+-responsiveness, Microalgae-based carbon capture