Application of Exchangeable Biochemical Reactors with Oxidase‐Catalase‐Co‐immobilizates and Immobilized Microorganisms in a Microfluidic Chip‐Calorimeter

Several methods for the quantitative detection of different compounds, e.g., L‐amino acids, sugars or alcohols in liquid media were developed by application of an automatic measuring unit including a fluid chip‐calorimeter FCC‐21. For this purpose, enzymes were immobilized covalently on the inner and outer surface of CPG (controlled porous glass)‐spherules with an outer diameter of 100 μm and filled into a micro flow‐through reaction chamber (V_R = 20 μL). The design of the measuring cell allows for easy insertion into the calorimeter device of a stored series of comfortably pre‐fabricated measuring cells. These cells can be filled with different enzyme immobilizates. Different oxidases were used and co‐immobilized with catalase for the improvement of the detection sensitivity. A signal amplification could be achieved up to a factor of 3.5 with this configuration. β‐D‐glucose, ethanol and L‐lysine could be detected in a range of 0.25–1.75 mM using glucose oxidase, alcohol oxidase and lysine oxidase. The group of oxidases in combination with the enzymatic catalysis of the intermediate H₂O₂ allows the quantitative detection of a large number of analytes. A good measurement and storage stability could be achieved for several weeks by this immobilization method. In addition to enzyme‐based detection reactions, it was shown that living microorganisms can be immobilized in the reaction chamber. Thus, the system can be used as a whole‐cell biosensor. The quantitative detection of phenol in the range of 10–100 μM could be performed using the actinomycete Rhodococcus sp. immobilized on glass beads by means of embedding into polymers.