“Gold-plated” IRMOF-3 and sea cucumber-like Pd@PtRh SNRs based sandwich-type immunosensor for dual-mode detection of PCT

Abstract

Electrochemical immunoassays are often used in the detection of biomarkers, and their sensitivity depends on the nature of the substrate and the catalytic activity of the signal amplification platform. In this work, a novel sandwich-type signal amplification strategy with a “gold-plated” organometallic frame (Au/IRMOF-3) as the substrate and the sea cucumber-like Pd@PtRh trimetallic nanomaterial (Pd@PtRh SNRs) as label was fabricated. For the substrate, gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) are stably connected to the free amino groups on the surface of organometallic frame (IRMOF-3), which not only prevent the agglomeration of Au NPs, but also greatly enhance the conductivity of the nanocomposites. The synergy between the two nanomaterials further shows a stronger affinity for the fixation of capture antibodies (Ab1). For the label, the effective high catalytic activity comes from the Pd@PtRh SNRs with a sea cucumber-like morphology. The nano-scale spherical PtRh crystals epitaxially grown on smooth Pd nanorods (Pd NRs) have more catalytically active sites because of the abundant edge and corner atoms, resulting in high catalytic activity and durability towards H2O2 reduction. Choosing calcitonin (PCT) as the target, differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and amperometric i-t dual-mode detection was used to demonstrate the feasibility of the immunosensor. The results confirmed that the immunosensor exhibits excellent analytical capabilities and is satisfied in the analysis of human serum samples. Therefore, this strategy has great potential in the clinical application of electrochemical immunosensors.