A simpler and greener alternative route for anchoring carbohydrates with structural integrity on silica and glass supports

A novel, straightforward, and environmentally friendly direct coupling procedure to immobilize carbohydrates on solid supports is presented. A characterization study showed that all amino groups on solid supports participated in the linkage with a carbohydrate unit, implicating that the surface load can be easily adjusted by tuning the amination coverage of the surface. Most importantly, the integrity of the cyclic conformation of the linked sugar unit was demonstrated, a feature that is critical for most of the possible applications of carbohydrate-functionalized surfaces. Furthermore, carbohydrate-immobilized submicron particles synthesized by the direct coupling method, on which lectin profiling experiments were conducted, validated the successfulness of our simplistic approach.