Covalent Attachment of Horseradish Peroxidase to Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotubes for Hydrogen Peroxide Detection

Abstract Single‐walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are desirable nanoparticles for sensing biological analytes due to their photostability and intrinsic near‐infrared fluorescence. Previous strategies for generating SWCNT nanosensors have leveraged nonspecific adsorption of sensing modalities to the hydrophobic SWCNT surface that often require engineering new molecular recognition elements. An attractive alternate strategy is to leverage pre‐existing molecular recognition of proteins for analyte specificity, yet attaching proteins to SWCNT for nanosensor generation remains challenging. Toward this end, a generalizable platform is introduced to generate protein‐SWCNT‐based optical sensors and use this strategy to synthesize a hydrogen peroxide (H ₂ O ₂ ) nanosensor by covalently attaching horseradish peroxidase (HRP) to the SWCNT surface. A concentration‐dependent response is demonstrated to H ₂ O ₂ , confirming the nanosensor can image H ₂ O ₂ in real‐time, and assess the nanosensor's selectivity for H ₂ O ₂ against a panel of biologically relevant analytes. Taken together, these results demonstrate successful covalent attachment of enzymes to SWCNTs while preserving both intrinsic SWCNT fluorescence and enzyme function. It is anticipated this platform can be adapted to covalently attach other proteins of interest including other enzymes for sensing or antibodies for targeted imaging and cargo delivery.