Fabricating a wettable microwells array onto a nitrogen plasma-treated ITO substrate: high-throughput fluorimetric platform for selective sensing of ammonia in blood using polymer-stabilized NH2-MIL-125

A high-throughput and selective fluorimetric platform has been constructed for the analysis of ammonia in blood by using a polymer-stabilized metal–organic framework (MOF) of porous NH2-MIL-125, which was coated onto a wettable microwells array constructed on an indium tin oxide (ITO) substrate. It was found that the nitrogen plasma treatment for the ITO substrate could create a super-hydrophilic interface that combined with the hydrophobic pattern yielded a wettable microwells array, enabling the condensation-based enrichment of targets from the sample droplets. Moreover, the NH2-MIL-125 MOF encapsulated using polymers could be firmly coated onto the microwells to act as fluorescent probes for sensing NH3 with enhanced responses. In addition, the use of the polymer polyvinyl pyrrolidone could protect and stabilize the crystals of NH2-MIL-125 probe in aqueous media, revealing the improved hydrophilicity and significantly depressed signal background. The as-developed fluorimetric platform, containing a MOF-coated microwells array, can enable the detection of ammonia in blood, with concentrations ranging linearly from 0.10 to 300 μM. More importantly, this plasma treatment-based fabrication route may hold promise for designing different wettable microwells arrays for the high-throughput detection of multiple targets in the fields of biomedical analysis and environmental monitoring.