Conductive and Shape Reformable Polymeric Nanofibers Entrapped with QDs As a Material for Enzyme Stabilization

In this study, we report the structure and shape of new polymeric nanofibers entrapped with QDs based on its unique properties, along with its very successful implementation as an enzyme carrier.  Electrospinning was employed to obtain uniformly distributed Cadmium Selenide (CdSe)/Zinc Sulfide (ZnS) core shell quantum dot (QD) encapsulated nanofibers in polymeric mixture of polystyrene (PS) and polystyrene-co-maleic anhydride (PSMA) copolymer. The introduction of QDs into the PS–PSMA nanofibers was found to bring electrical conductivity on them.  In addition, uniformly distributed QDs within the polymer matrix seem to induce the high degree of compactness and shape rigidity in the nanofibers, and resulted in the efficient enzyme immobilization. Therefore, after immobilization, the esterase enzymes coated on the QDs–nanofibers showed good stability with no loss of enzyme activity even after being recycled for more than ten times.  The present study demonstrates the successful application of shape reformable polymeric nanofibers entrapped with QDs for the first time, and so it is anticipated that this technology can be employed in various enzyme applications due to its facile shape control feature in the fabrication of the nanofibers for enzyme reactor, and applied for electrical conductance or gas based sensing applications.