Hampitak, Piramon

Iliut, Maria

Jowitt, Thomas

Melendrez Armada, Daniel

Vijayaraghavan, Aravind

The interaction of biomolecules, such as proteins, with biomaterial surfaces is key to disease diagnostic andtherapeutic development applications. There is a significant need for rapid, low-cost, field-serviceableinstruments to monitor such interactions, where open-source tools can help to improve the accessibility todisease screening instruments especially in low- and middle-income countries. We have developed andevaluated a low-cost integrated quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) instrument for biomolecular analysisbased on an open-source QCM device. The custom QCM instrument was equipped with a custom-madeelectronically controlled isothermal chamber with a closed-loop control routine. A thermal coefficient of5.6 ppm/°C was obtained from a series of evaluations of the implemented control. Additionally, a customdesigneddata acquisition system and a mathematical processing and analysis tool is implemented. Thequartz crystal detection chips used here incorporate gold and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) coated surfaces.We demonstrate the system capability to monitor and record the biomolecular interaction between a typicalprotein bovine serum albumin (BSA) and these two substrates. This instrument was compared to acommercial QCM, demonstrating good correspondence between the computed mass adsorption densityresponses using the Sauerbrey model. For both Au and rGO surfaces, the custom QCM significantlyoutperforms the commercial system in limit of detection, sensitivity and linear range. The instrumentpresented here has the potential to serve as a ubiquitous bioelectronic tool for point-of-care diseasescreening and rapid therapeutics development

The University of Manchester - Institutional Repository

Development of an open-source thermally stabilized quartz crystal microbalance instrument for biomolecule-substrate binding assays on gold and graphene

Development of an open-source thermally stabilized quartz crystal microbalance instrument for biomolecule-substrate binding assays on gold and graphene

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The University of Manchester - Institutional Repository