NOVEL FUNCTIONAL HYDROPHILIC POLYMERS AND HYDROGELS FOR MICROANALYTICAL SYSTEMS

This thesis focuses on the use of hydrophilic polymers for bioanalytical applications, including several microanalytical techniques encompassing nanotechnology, microarray technology and DNA gel electrophoresis. The dissertation is divided in two parts, which share the employment of dimethylacrylamide-based copolymers, developed at the laboratory of Analytical Microsystems of the Institute of Chemistry for Molecular Recognition (National Research Council of Italy) where the thesis has been carried out. PART A introduces a novel approach for surface modification of quantum dots and gold nanoparticles, based on physi-/chemisorption of two different functional dimethylacrylamide copolymers. Beside developing innovative functionalization strategies, the goal is to demonstrate the application of coated nanoparticles in highly sensitive immunoassays based on microarray technology. PART B of the dissertation presents the results of an activity, conducted in collaboration with the company Agilent Technology (UK), aimed at developing an innovative gel sieving matrix for high performance DNA electrophoresis. We introduce a new hydrogel obtained by cross-linking an alkyne modified polymer with an azide one, exploiting a copper catalysed click chemistry reaction. The alkyne functionalized polymer is based on poly(dimethilacrylamide) and it was obtained by a post-polymerization modification approach from the parent copolymer poly(DMA-NAS-MAPS), extensively used in the first part of this dissertation. The azide polymer is a polyethylenglycol terminated with azide groups at both ends, and is commercially available. A considerable part of this work is devoted to the optimization of the characteristics of the new hydrogel, in particular to the extension of its shelf-life, an important parameter in view of its industrial application.