Preparation and characterisation of fluorescent mesoporous surfaces: towards the study of extracellular fluxes

Abstract

This thesis describes the efforts made toward developing new structured surfaces. These new structured and modified surfaces presented are of great potential interest in the detection of cellular flux. They also provide an interesting synthetic challenge due to the requirement for the synthesis of complex multi-functional molecules and their immobilisation on a surface. The project also presents a challenge in terms of multidisciplinarity, as many different techniques from different areas of science need to be understood and applied.

The structured surfaces were deposited using a method developed by Alain Walcarius: Electrochemically assisted self-assembly (EASA). Fluorescent dyes, chosen to respond to a typical cellular flux, were synthesised and covalently attached onto the deposited surface. This report presents the synthesis of nine dyes, which can respond to pH, K+ or Zn2+.

The nine dyes were attached on the structured surfaces, the surfaces were characterised (cyclic voltammetry, Raman spectroscopy, microscopy) and its properties determined (pKa, quantum yield, selectivity). Ultimately, fluorescent microscopy will give numerous different possibilities for biological analysis. The future work will be to focus on growing cells on the surfaces and validate our methodology by studying the fluorescent response of the surface towards extracellular fluxes.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Richard C.D. Brown: orcid.org/0000-0003-0156-7087

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