Au/FeO-based nanozymes with peroxidase-like activity integrated in immunochromatographic strips for highly-sensitive biomarker detection.

Because of their simplicity, rapidity, and cost-effectiveness, immunochromatographic strips (ICTs) have been widely used as an effective tool in various fields. However, typical strips for the preliminary screening suffer from limited detection sensitivity, particularly in biomarker detection with trace concentration. Herein, to tackle this challenge, we integrated homemade gold-decorated FeO nanoparticles (Au/FeO NPs) with flexible strips, exploring the excellent peroxidase-like activity of this labeled material, and then enhancing the detection sensitivity signal amplification. The limit of detection (LOD) of the strips is as low as 0.05 mIU mL when human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is as a biomarker model, which is 500 times lower than that of the traditional color-based strip. Overall, our results demonstrated the potential for Au/FeO NP based-ICTs for the rapid detection of the biomarker in an instrument-free and point-of-care testing format.