Abstract
Measurements selective toward tetracaine were performed using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor with the sensor chip coated with a tetracaine-selective film prepared by a molecular imprinting technique. For preparing the tetracaine-selective film, tetracaine was used as a template, methacrylic acid as a functional monomer; ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate as a crosslinking monomer and 2,2'-azobisisobutyronitrile as an initiator. The quantity of tetracaine caught by the tetracaine-selective film was 0.42 ng/mm2 using the SPR measurement. The rate at which the tetracaine was caught by the tetracaine-selective film versus the tetracaine concentration gave a linear plot in the range of 0.01 to 0.04 mol/l, which means that this method is applicable to quantitative analysis. The tetracaine-selective film was applied to other local anesthetics, such as procaine, lidcaine, mepivacaine and bupivacaine. The quantities of these anesthetics caught by the tetracaine-selective film were sufficiently smaller than 0.42 ng/mm2. Thus, a prepared SPR sensor with a tetracaine-selective film had high selectivity toward tetracaine.
