Bare carbon electrodes as simple and efficient sensors for the quantification of caffeine in commercial beverages

This work has been supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 642014 (IPCOS). Ĺ.Š. would like to acknowledge the Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic (grant no. 1/0489/16)

Voltammetric sensor for theophylline using sol-gel immobilized molecularly imprinted polymer particles

El títol del pre-print va ser: Development of a voltammetric sensor for theophylline with sol-gel immobilised molecularly imprinted polymer particlesApplication of Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) to sensor substrates holds great promise within the field of electrochemical sensing due to their low price, tailored selectivity and facile synthesis protocols. Though MIPs can be synthesised directly onto the surface of sensors via layer or film deposition, this can be difficult due to the high number of interdependent steps involved in their synthesis. For this reason, synthesis of MIP particles is more frequently employed by synthetic and non-specialist laboratories alike. There is, however a lack of immobilisation protocols for these particles. Herein, there is presented a sol-gel based immobilisation method for MIP particles for the development of an electrochemical sensor. The macroporous precipitation-polymerised particles were imprinted with Theophylline, combined with graphite in the sol-gel and deposited on an electrode surface. The sensor was tested using differential pulse voltammetry. A limit of detection of 1µM and a relative standard deviation of 6.85% was observed for the primary analyte. The electrode was regenerated via a thermal washing process with a signal loss of 29.3% following the initial regeneration and 2.35% per subsequent regeneration