Applications of carbon nanotubes to electrochemical DNA sensors: a new strategy to make direct and selective hybridization detection from SWNTs

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we first review different strategies reported in the literature to elaborate electrochemical DNA sensors based on carbon nanotubes. Then we report a new strategy to graft both redox and DNA probes onto carbon nanotubes to make a label-free DNA sensor. Oxidized single-walled carbon nanotubes are first immobilized on a self-assembled monolayer of cysteamine. Then a redox probe, a quinone derivative 3-[(2-aminoethyl) sulfanyl-5-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinone], is grafted onto the free carboxylic groups of the nanotubes. After that, for DNA probe grafting, new carboxylic sites are generated via an aryl diazonium route. After hybridization with a complementary sequence, the conformational changes of DNA could influence the redox kinetics of quinone, leading to a current increase in the redox signal, detected by square wave voltammetry. The system is selective, as it can distinguish a single mismatched sequence from the complementary one.