A Simple and Efficient Molecularly Imprinted Electrochemical Sensor for the Selective Determination of Tryptophan

In this paper, a tryptophan (Trp) molecularly imprinted chitosan film was prepared on the surface of an acetylene black paste electrode using chitosan as the functional polymer, Trp as the template molecule and sulfuric acid as the crosslinking agent. The surface morphologies of non-imprinted and imprinted electrodes were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The formation of hydrogen bonds between the functional polymer and the template molecule was confirmed by infrared spectroscopy. Some factors affecting the performance of the imprinted electrode such as the concentration of chitosan, the mass ratio of chitosan to Trp, the dropping amount of the chitosan-Trp mixture, the solution pH, and the accumulation potential and time were discussed. The experimental results show that the imprinted electrode exhibit good affinity and selectivity for Trp. The dynamic linear ranges of 0.01–4 μM, 4–20 μM and 20–100 μM were obtained by second derivative linear sweep voltammetry, and the detection limit was calculated to be 8.0 nM. The use of the imprinted electrode provides an effective method for eliminating the interference of potentially interfering substances. In addition, the sensor has high sensitivity, reproducibility and stability, and can be used for the determination of Trp in pharmaceutical preparations and human serum samples.