Nano-Graphene Oxide Based Multichannel Sensor Arrays towards Sensing of Protein Mixtures

Optical array-based sensors are attractive candidates for the detection of various bio-analytes due to their convenient fabrication and measurements. For array-based sensors, multichannel arrays are more advantageous and used frequently in many electronic sensors. But most reported optically array based sensors are constructed on a single channel array. This difficulty is mainly instigated from the overlap in optical responses. In this report we have used nano-graphene oxide (nGO) and suitable fluorophores as sensor elements to construct a multichannel sensor array for the detection of protein analytes. By using the optimized multichannel array we are able to detect different proteins and mixtures of proteins with 100 % classification accuracy at sub-nanomolar concentration. This modified method expedites the sensing analysis as well as minimizes the use of both analyte and sensor elements in array-based protein sensing. We have also used this system for the single channel array-based sensing to compare the sensitivity and the efficacy of these two systems for other applications. This work demonstrated an intrinsic trade-off associated with these two methods which may be necessary to balance for array-based analyte detections.