ABSTRACT
Abstract-Chemical reactions at surface functionalities of various surfaces are of ever increasing importance in many different areas, such as microarray technology or design of sensor materials. Prominent examples are the attachment of sensor or biomolecules to polymeric and glass supports. Such developments require techniques for a controlled generation of different types and densities of surface functionalities, testing protocols for covalent attachment of functional molecules to these reactive groups and last, but not least, methods for proper characterization and quantification of these species at various surfaces. Here, results are presented on covalent coupling of fluorescent labels to functional groups on polymer surfaces based on several synthetic concepts employing different types of surface functionalities, spacers, and fluorescent labels such as commercially available dansyl, rhodamine, and fluorescein dyes. Besides the fluorometric characterization of these surfacelinked fluorophores, emission measurements are compared with XPS results, thereby evaluating the potential of fluorometry for the characterization and quantification of surface functionalities.
