Target-Modulated Hydrophobic Precipitation in Photocatalytic Nanochannels for Sensitive Detection of Alpha Fetoprotein.

It is important to detect cancer biomarkers at an early stage of tumor development for the effective diagnosis and treatment of cancer. As a well-known probe for detecting superoxide (·O) radicals, nitro blue tetrazolium (NBT) can rapidly react with ·O to form a hydrophobic formazan precipitate. In this study, by deliberately utilizing this reaction, Pt asymmetrically decorated on a TiO nanochannel membrane (Pt/TiNM) is explored to fabricate an electrochemical immunosensing platform with outstanding selectivity and ultrahigh sensitivity. Using NBT as the substrate, hydrophobic formazan precipitation induces a substantial block of ionic diffusion flux in nanochannels. Using alpha fetoprotein (AFP) as the target analyte, the established immunorecognition event was used to induce MoS-Ab conjugates. Thanks to the excellent light-shielding ability of MoS nanosheets, the production of ·O radicals from the photocatalysis of Pt/TiNM is effectively depressed because of the attenuated arrival of light. The reduced formazan precipitation results in ionic transport changes in nanochannels, which in turn enables the selective recognition of AFP down to 2 ng mL. This target-modulated sensing strategy is also capable of sensing other immune targets, thus paving a new way for designing nanochannel-based sensing platforms.