Morphology Control of Self-Assembled Copper Coordination Polymers for Glucose Assays

Low-cost analytical assays enable accessible detection of clinically and environmentally important analytes; however, common enzyme-based assays suffer from high production and storage costs. Catalytically active synthetic materials serve as replacements for natural enzymes, but development of cost-effective, highly efficient synthetic strategies remains a challenge. Here, we utilized a facile synthesis for copper bipyridine coordination polymers (CuBpyCPs) and investigated structure-function relationships to achieve optimal catalytic properties for a glucose assay. We demonstrated the manipulation of CuBpyCP morphology, resulting in nanoscale petal-like structures and microscale high-index faceted structures, and identified three pure crystal morphologies exhibiting a comparable catalytic activity (K_m = 0.3-0.5 mM) to horseradish peroxidase.