Antimicrobial Peptide Functionalized Conductive Nanowire Array Electrode as a Promising Candidate for Bacterial Environment Application

Abstract Conductive polymer electrodes are widely used for electrical signal detection owing to their unique mechanical, redox, and impedance characteristics. However, the performance of electrodes is compromised due to the interference of adhered bacteria and most of the scientists have not taken the microbial environment into consideration during electrode design. Here, a facile approach to construct antimicrobial peptide (AMP) functionalized polypyrrole nanowire array conductive electrodes (PNW‐AMP) is reported. Instead of compromising the electrochemical properties as the other antibacterial agents do, the PNW‐AMP electrodes exhibit excellent redox and low interfacial impedance properties. More importantly, the PNW‐AMP can eliminate bacterial adhesion and maintain electrochemical stability simultaneously in the microbial microenvironment for a long time. The antibacterial rate of the PNW‐AMP electrode reaches 95.8% after exposing the electrode to air for one month, while the charge transfer resistance ( R ct ) value only increases by 9% at a bacterium ( Escherichia. Coli ) concentration of 1 × 10 4 colony forming unit (CFU) mL −1 . This research makes it possible to construct highly stable conductive polymer electrodes for bacterial environment electrical signal detection.