Bovine Serum Albumin Adsorption in Mesoporous Titanium Dioxide: Pore Size and Pore Chemistry Effect

Understanding the mechanism of protein adsorption and designing materials with high sensitivity, high specificity and fast response are critical to develop the next-generation biosensing and diagnostic platforms. Mesoporous materials with high surface area, tunable pores, and good thermal/hydrostatic stabilities are promising candidates in this field. Because of the excellent biocompatibility, titanium dioxide has received an increasing interest in the past decade for biomedical applications. In this work, we synthesized mesoporous titanium dioxide with controlled pore sizes (7.2-28.0 nm) and explored their application for bovine serum albumin (BSA) adsorption. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and nitrogen adsorption/desorption experiments were performed to characterize the mesoporous TiO₂ samples before and after BSA adsorption. Isothermal microcalorimetry was applied to measure both the adsorption heat and conformation rearrangement heat of BSA in those mesopores. We also carried out thermogravimetry measurements to qualitatively estimate the concentration of hydroxyl groups, which plays an important role in stabilizing BSA in-pore adsorption. The adsorption stability was also examined by leaching experiments. The results showed that TiO₂ mesopores can host BSA adsorption when their diameters are larger than the hydrodynamic size of BSA (∼9.5 nm). In larger mesopores studied, two BSA molecules were adsorbed in the same pores. In contrast to the general understanding that large mesopores demonstrate poor stabilities for protein adsorptions, the synthesized mesoporous TiO₂ samples demonstrated good leaching stabilities for BSA adsorption. This is probably due to the combination of the mesoporous confinement and the in-pore hydroxyl groups.