Electrothermal Synthesis of Cell-Imprinted Polymer Coatings on Metallic Microwires for Bacterial Capture.

This study presents an electrothermal coating approach for synthesizing cell-imprinted polymers (CIPs) on metallic microwires through localized resistive heating-induced polymerization. Imprinted polymers (IPs) are robust, cost-effective synthetic affinity materials widely used in sensing applications. However, conventional fabrication methods, including bulk and suspension polymerization, often lack spatial control, producing non-specific polymerization, heterogeneous coatings, and reduced sensor reproducibility. Electrochemical polymerization provides improved spatial control but requires specialized instrumentation and restricts monomer selection. Here, applying direct current (DC) to metallic microwires immersed in a prepolymer solution generated localized Joule heating, enabling controlled in situ polymerization and uniform coatings while minimizing undesired bulk polymerization. By optimizing the applied current and polymerization time, CIP coatings with tunable thicknesses were fabricated on gold-coated microwires. Under optimized conditions, ~6 µm thick coatings were imprinted using