Search

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a significant threat to global health, powered by pathogens that become increasingly proficient at withstanding antibiotic treatments. This review introduces the factors contributing to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), highlighting the presence of antibiotics in different environmental and biological matrices as a significant contributor to the resistance. It emphasizes the urgent need for robust and effective detection methods to identify these substances and mitigate their impact on AMR. Traditional techniques, such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and immunoassays, are discussed alongside their limitations. The review underscores the emerging role of biosensors as promising alternatives for antibiotic detection, with a particular focus on electrochemical biosensors. Therefore, the manuscript extensively explores the principles and various types of electrochemical biosensors, elucidating their advantages, including high sensitivity, rapid response, and potential for point-of-care applications. Moreover, the manuscript investigates recent advances in materials used to fabricate electrochemical platforms for antibiotic detection, such as aptamers and molecularly imprinted polymers, highlighting their role in enhancing sensor performance and selectivity. This review culminates with an evaluation and summary of commercially available and spin-off sensors for antibiotic detection, emphasizing their versatility and portability. By explaining the landscape, role, and future outlook of electrochemical biosensors in antibiotic detection, this review provides insights into the ongoing efforts to combat the escalating threat of AMR effectively.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacterium that poses a significant threat to public health, necessitating rapid and on-site detection methods for rapid recognition. The goal of the project is therefore to indirectly detect the presence of P. aeruginosa in environmental water samples targeting one of its quorum-sensing molecules, namely, ( S )- N -butyryl homoserine lactone (BHL). To this aim, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) were synthesized via bulk free-radical polymerization using BHL as a template molecule. The obtained MIP particles were immobilized onto screen-printed electrodes (MIP-SPEs), and the BHL rebinding was analyzed via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). To study the specificity of the synthesized MIPs, isotherm curves were built after on-point rebinding analysis performed via LC-MS measurements for both MIPs and NIPs (nonimprinted polymers, used as a negative control), obtaining an imprinting factor (IF) of 2.8 (at C f = 0.4 mM). The MIP-SPEs were integrated into an electrochemical biosensor with a linear range of 1 × 10 1 -1 × 10 3 nM and a limit of detection (LoD) of 31.78 ± 4.08 nM. Selectivity measurements were also performed after choosing specific interferent molecules, such as structural analogs and potential interferents, followed by on-point analysis performed in spiked tap water to prove the sensor's potential to detect the presence of the quorum-sensing molecule in environmentally related real-life samples., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Ensuring a rapid and accurate identification of harmful bacteria is crucial in various fields including environmental monitoring, food safety, and clinical diagnostics. Conventional detection methods often suffer from limitations such as long analysis time, complexity, and the need for qualified personnel. Therefore, a lot of research effort is devoted to developing technologies with the potential to revolutionize the detection of pathogenic bacteria by offering rapid, sensitive, and user-friendly platforms for point-of-care analysis. In this light, biosensors have gained significant commercial attention in recent years due to their simplicity, portability, and rapid analysis capabilities. The purpose of this review is to identify a trend by analyzing which biosensor technologies have become commercially successful in the field of bacteria detection. Moreover, we highlight the characteristics that a biosensor must possess to finally arrive in the market and therefore in the hands of the end-user, and we present critical examples of the market applications of various technologies. The aim is to investigate the reason why certain technologies have achieved commercial success and extrapolate these trends to the future economic viability of a new subfield in the world of biosensing: the development of biomimetic sensor platforms. Therefore, an overview of recent advances in the field of biomimetic bacteria detection will be presented, after which the challenges that need to be addressed in the coming years to improve market penetration will be critically evaluated. We will zoom into the current shortcomings of biomimetic sensors based on imprinting technology and aptamers and try to come up with a recommendation for further development based on the trends observed from previous commercial success stories in biosensing., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Biradicaloid compounds with an open-shell ground state have been the subject of intense research in the past decade. Although diindenoacenes are one of the most developed families, only a few examples have been reported as active layers in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) with a charge mobility of around 10 -3 cm 2 V -1 s -1 due to a steric disadvantage of the mesityl group to kinetically stabilize compounds. Herein, we disclose our efforts to improve the charge transport of the diindenoacene family based on hexahydro-diindenopyrene (HDIP) derivatives with different annelation modes for which the most reactive position has been functionalized with (triisopropylsilyl)ethynyl (TIPS) groups. All the HDIP derivatives show remarkably higher stability than that of TIPS-pentacene, enduring for 2 days to more than 30 days, which depends on the oxidation potential, the contribution of the singlet biradical form in the ground state and the annelation mode. The annelation mode affects not only the band gap and the biradical character ( y 0 ) but also the value of the singlet-triplet energy gap (Δ E S-T ) that does not follow the reverse trend of y 0 . A method based on comparison between experimental and theoretical bond lengths has been disclosed to estimate y 0 and shows that y 0 computed at the projected unrestricted Hartree-Fock (PUHF) level is the most relevant among those reported by all other methods. Thanks to their high stability, thin-film OFETs were successfully fabricated. Well balanced ambipolar transport was obtained in the order of 10 -3 cm 2 V -1 s -1 in the bottom-gate/top-contact configuration, and unipolar transport in the top-gate/bottom-contact configuration was obtained in the order of 10 -1 cm 2 V -1 s -1 which is the highest value obtained for biradical compounds with a diindenoacene skeleton., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Printed organic electronics has attracted considerable interest in recent years as it enables the fabrication of large-scale, low-cost electronic devices, and thus offers significant possibilities in terms of developing new applications in various fields. Easy processing is a prerequisite for the development of low-cost, flexible and printed plastics electronics. Among processing techniques, meniscus guided coating methods are considered simple, efficient, and low-cost methods to fabricate electronic devices in industry. One of the major challenges is the control of thin film morphology, molecular orientations and directional alignment of polymer films during coating processes. Herein, the recent progress of emerging field of meniscus guided printing organic semiconductor materials is discussed. The first part of this report briefly summarizes recent advances in meniscus guided coating techniques. The second part discusses periodic deposits and patterned deposition at moving contact lines, where the mass-transport influences film morphology due to convection at the triple contact line. The last section summarizes our strategy to fabricate large-scale patterning of π-conjugated polymers using meniscus guided method., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Diindeno[1,2- b :2',1'- n ]perylene, a new derivative of the indenoacene family was synthesized, and its electronic, electrochemical, and electrical properties were investigated. This material has a closed shell electronic configuration which corresponds to a quinoidal structure with a low band gap of 1.35 eV. Molecular packing in the single crystal was studied by single-crystal X-ray structural analysis, and this information was subsequently used in the determination of the charge transfer integrals via density functional theory methods. The charge-carrier transport properties of the diindeno[1,2- b :2',1'- n ]perylene-5,12-dione and diindeno[1,2- b :2',1'- n ]perylene derivatives were investigated through the fabrication and characterization of field-effect transistors via both vacuum-deposited and solution-processed films, respectively. Diindeno[1,2- b :2',1'- n ]perylene exhibited a field-effect behaviour with a hole mobility up to 1.7 × 10 -3 cm 2 V -1 s -1 when the active layer was solution-processed.

The title compound, C(61)H(68)F(8)O(2)S(2), is a photochromic liquid crystal based on diaryl-ethene as photoswitchable unit. The F atoms connected to the benzene rings are disordered over two positions; the site-occupation factors refined to 0.830 (3)/0.170 (3). The mol-ecule adopts a photo-active anti-parallel conformation and the distance between the two reactive C atoms of the thio-phene rings is 3.448 (3) Å. The dihedral angles between the central cyclo-pentene ring and the adjacent thio-phene rings are 43.56 (3) and 48.58 (3)°. These structural elements exhibit a suitable geometry for photochromic behaviour in the crystalline state.

The kinetics of the thermal fading of four halogenated naphthopyrans (NP) have been analyzed using NMR spectroscopy in CD(3)CN. Two photomerocyanines (TT and TC) were detected after UV irradiation. The main relaxation process TC --> NP was coupled with TT/TC isomerization. The activation parameters of the various processes were rationalized by considering electronegativity and polarizability of the halogen substituents and their selective solvation by the electronegative nitrogen of acetonitrile.