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Title:
Functionalisation of conducting polymers for biosensors and bioelectronics
Abstract:
Conducting polymers (CPs) have been widely used as electroactive biointerfaces in applications such as electrically stimulated tissue engineering, biosensors and flexible organic bioelectronics.
In this talk, I will provide an overview of the recent research in my group on the following: (i) Our approach to soft, biomimetic polymeric electronic materials with a wide range of applications – from biosensing and bioelectronics to novel, stretchable, energy devices. These materials overcome many limitations of current electronic materials that are rigid and have a considerable mechanical mismatch to biological tissues. (ii) Design and fabrication of flexible, microporous, electrochemically switchable membranes for fast, selective, non-destructive and efficient capture and subsequent release of extracellular vesicles and rare cells as important biomarkers of diseases for medical diagnostics. (iii) Addressing the issue that electrodes for probing tissues are commonly 2D and, as such, cannot fully probe the actual 3D cell environment within tissues and organs.
Our approach to overcome that is based on a precise fabrication of individually addressable, 3D CP microelectrode arrays by means of ‘direct printing’. Such 3D microelectrode arrays could be employed in various applications, from biological sensing to recording and electrically stimulating cells and tissues.
Biography:
Jadranka Travas-Sejdic is a Professor at the School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Auckland. She is co-director of the Centre for Innovative Materials for Health at The University of Auckland and a Principal Investigator of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Her research interests are in the areas of biosensors and organic electronic materials for bioelectronics.
Professor Travas-Sejdic has authored ca. 320 publications, including 11 books and encyclopaedia chapters. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (2017), a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (2009), she received Early Career Research Excellence Award (2005), Easterfield Medal (2006), Maurice Wilkins Centre Prize for Chemical Sciences (2017), Shorland Medal (2018), Hector Medal (2019) and The University of Auckland Research Excellence Award (2022). She has been a Councillor of the Pacific Polymer Federation since 2009.