Effects of acoustic wave resonance oscillation on immobilized enzyme

Abstract In aiming at developing a new method to artificially activate enzyme catalysts immobilized on surface, the effects of resonance oscillation of bulk acoustic waves were studied. Glucose oxidase (GOD) was immobilized by a covalent coupling method on a ferroelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) device that was able to generate thickness-extensional resonance oscillation (TERO). Glucose oxidation by the GOD enzyme was studied in a microreactor. The generation of TERO immediately increased the catalytic activity of immobilized GOD by a factor of 2–3. With turn-off of TERO, no significant activity decrease occurred, and 80–90% of the enhanced activity was maintained while the reaction proceeded. The almost complete reversion of the activity to the original low level before TERO generation was observed when the immobilized GOD was exposed to a glucose substrate-free solution. These results indicated that the presence of glucose substrate was essential for TERO-induced GOD activation and preservation of the increased activity level. The influences of reaction temperature, glucose concentration, pH, and rf electric power on the TERO activation showed that TERO strengthened the interactions of the immobilized enzyme with glucose substrate and hence promoted the formation of an activation complex.