Towards optoelectronic urea biosensors

Integration of immobilized enzymes with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) leads to the development of optoelectronic enzyme-based biosensors. In this work, urease, used as a model enzyme, immobilized in the form of an open-tubular microbioreactor or biosensing membrane that has been integrated with two red LEDs. It forms complete, fiberless, miniaturized, and extremely economic biooptoelectronic devices useful for nonstationary measurements under flow analysis conditions. Both enzyme-based biodevices, operating according to the paired emitter detector diode (PEDD) principle, allow relatively fast, highly sensitive, and well-reproducible urea detection in the millimolar range of concentrations. Potential analytical applications of the developed urea bioPEDDs have been announced. Both presented constructions will be easily adapted for the development of other optoelectronic biosensors exploring various enzyme-based schemes of biodetection. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00216-014-8434-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.