Study on the activity and stability of urease immobilized onto nanoporous alumina membranes

Nanoporous alumina membranes were employed as substrate materials for urease immobilization. Anodic porous alumina was prepared by the two-step anodization of high purity aluminum. By controlling anodization conditions, the nanoporous structure with desired dimension was obtained. Urease immobilization onto nanoporous alumina membranes was performed by four different protocols. Effect of pore diameter, pore length and immobilization methods on the activity and stability of immobilized enzyme was discussed in detail. The results show that the enzymes immobilized onto porous alumina with big pore diameter possess high activity and poor stability as compared to small pore diameter. The effect of pore length is complicated, the activity of enzyme increases with the increasing pore length for big pore size; while for correspondingly small pore size, enzymatic activity slightly depends on pore length. The immobilization methods have a slight effect on enzymatic activity, whereas enzyme immobilization by chitosan coating and reticulation with glutaraldehyde exhibits a good long-term stability as compared to that only via physical adsorption. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.