Fibrous polymer functionalized magnetic biocatalysts for improved performance

Although enzymes are known for their excellent catalytic performance, industrial, medical or biotechnological applications should overcome some drawbacks like long-term stability under specific conditions of the application. Immobilized enzymes have offered advantages over soluble counterparts in many industrial and laboratory scale applications by increasing operational stability and reusability. When the immobilization matrix has magnetic properties, an additional advantage is obtained as simpler processing. Iron-based superparamagnetic nano-sized particles has large surface area for bio-compatible applications are especially in focus. Adding nanofibrous polymers to magnetic nanoparticles has been an excellent way to increase efficiency of biocatalyst immobilization by further increasing loading capacity. This chapter explains various magnetic enzyme-nanoparticles based preparations with potential for future industrial applications like invertase, lipase and as model studies and focus on the nanofibrous polymer brush grafting as a way to increase catalytic efficiency of magnetic nanoparticles.