Labas, Sarah2023-04-262023-04-262023-04-262023-04-21http://hdl.handle.net/10012/19333The caffeine and theophylline aptamers were used in tandem with gold nanoparticles and graphene oxide to study potential methods for small molecule detection. The AuNP approach is a label-free approach, and the graphene oxide-based sensor is a fluorescence based approach. Each sensor is based off previous literature reporting sensors for DNA targets; more recent literature uses both methods for small molecule detection, but fails to consider target-nanomaterial interactions. The works presented in this thesis serve to determine whether such an interaction exists, and how it may affect the accuracy of the sensors.enaptamersbiosensorscaffeinegold nanoparticlesgraphene oxidetheophyllineMaster Thesis