Elsevier

Food Chemistry

Volume 341, Part 1, 30 March 2021, 128231
Food Chemistry

Gold nanoparticles-functionalized three-dimensional flower-like manganese dioxide: A high-sensitivity thermal analysis immunochromatographic sensor

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2020.128231Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Developed a sensitive photothermal sensor for deoxynivalenol detecting in food.

  • Au nanoparticle-enhanced MnO2 nanoflowers were used as photothermal-sensing probes.

  • Quantitative analysis was carried out by a thermal imager and infrared thermometer.

Abstract

A sensitive photothermal immunochromatographic test strip (PITS) for the detection of deoxynivalenol (DON) was developed using flower-like gold nanoparticle-deposited manganese dioxide nanocarrier (FMD-G NC) labeled antibodies (Abs) as the photothermal-sensing probe. FMD was used as a template to deposit small gold nanoparticles (GNPs) to synthesize FMD-G NC with large specific surface area and significant photothermal conversion property. The FMD-G-Ab probe was competitively captured by DON target and antigen coated on test line (T-line), forming colorimetric signals under naked eyes and photothermal signals under an 808 nm laser. Under optimal conditions, the PITS exhibited sensitive and specific detection of DON from 0.19 ng mL−1 to 12 ng mL−1 with detection limits of 0.013 ng mL−1, which were over 15-fold and 58-fold more sensitive than visual FMD-G-ITS and traditional GNPs-ITS. In addition, the novel FMD-G-PITS possessed a universal applicability, which could be well applied in green bean, corn, and millet.

Introduction

Immunochromatographic test strip (ITS) (Huang, Aguilar, Xu, Lai, & Xiong, 2016), as a cost-less, easy-operated and rapid technique, has been widely utilized as a promising detection method in different fields such as biomedicine, foodborne disease surveillance, and environmental monitoring (Nguyen, Song, Park, & Joo, 2020). Conventional gold nanoparticles (GNPs)-based ITS is the most common POC detection method by virtue of handy implementation, visual observation, and desirable performance, but its sensitivity and accuracy still demand further amelioration (Camilo et al., 2019, Preechakasedkit et al., 2012, Zhang et al., 2011). In the past decades, the most extensively studied on ITS to improve detection sensitivity are mainly concentrated on novel nanomaterials. Generally, novel nanomaterial-labeled ITS (One-dimensional material, such as carbon nanotube (Abera & Choi, 2010); Two-dimensional material, such as graphene and molybdenum disulfide (Bu et al., 2019, Li et al., 2019, Yu et al., 2017)) stands out due to various unique physical and chemical properties, ability to label antibodies (Abs) well, which will facilitate the detection sensitivity. Nowadays, three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures have attracted great attention owing to their unique structures, which allow the design of versatile platforms with good application in the photocatalytic (Tian et al., 2011), electronic devices (Deng et al., 2017), and high-performance supercapacitors (Wang et al., 2019). Compared with conventional nanomaterials, the 3D nanomaterials possess large surface-to-volume ratio and have potential as extraordinary carriers for labeling more Abs to improve sensitivity of biosensors.

Moreover, the optical properties of these materials were usually used as the basis of signal output in traditional ITSs (Ouyang et al., 2018, Zhang et al., 2017), but their outstanding photothermal sensing abilities were seriously ignored. Photothermal conversion property (PTCP) had attracted great centralized research interests in ITSs fields. The PTCP of GNPs has been described in several previous reports. Most studies have shown that the thermal signal can be used for analysis, and the sensitivity of ITS can be improved by reading the temperature signal (Hu et al., 2019, Qu et al., 2020, Wang et al., 2016). Moreover, Shirshahi, Tabatabaei, Hatamie, & Saber (2020) reported a photothermal enhanced ITS based on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) for the detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7 as a model pathogen, which was a 10-fold enhancement in sensitivity compared to the qualitative results. 3D flower-like manganese dioxide (FMD), as an n-type semiconductor, has attracted considerable attention due to its strong absorption capacity, large volume ratio and good catalytic reduction ability (Chiam et al., 2020, Wang et al., 2012). Meanwhile, FMD possesses an excellent photothermal performance, which can convert certain wavelength of light into heat under the radiation of a near infrared laser, resulting in temperature enhancement (Xia et al., 2019). However, the exploration of the unique PTCP of 3D FMD in ITS sensing is still at an early stage. Therefore, combining the excellent PTCP and large size of 3D FMD with simple and rapid detection ability of ITS can create a novel photothermal immunochromatographic test strip (PITS).

In this study, a simple one-step hydrothermal synthesis was utilized for flower-like manganese dioxide (FMD), which possessed the properties of large surface-to-volume ratio and excellent PTCP. Meanwhile, in order to bind with Abs, a lot of small GNPs were deposited on the surface of 3D FMD by a modified Frens method to build FMD-GNPs nanocarriers (FMD-G NC) (Frens, 1973). In addition, GNPs also featured unique PTCP, which was beneficial to PITS and can further increase the temperature of FMD. Then the prepared FMD-G-Ab was employed as photothermal-sensing probes to develop PITSs for sensitive and quantitative detection of deoxynivalenol (DON). DON is an essential representative of mycotoxins and highly toxic secondary metabolite. Consumption of those DON-contaminated cereals by herbivore could result in serious diseases and even immunosuppressive effects, and it was ultimately endanger people’s health through the food chain (Kong et al., 2019, Liu et al., 2017, Valera et al., 2019, Zhang et al., 2018). Based on the principle of competitive immunoreaction, the limit of detection (LOD), and selectively were studied to evaluate the performance of these PITS. The successful application on green bean, corn, and millet demonstrated the reliability and pervasiveness of the PITS. Owing to the rapid-qualitative and sensitive-quantitative detection, the PITS using FMD-G-Ab puts forward a promising strategy on various areas such as on-site screening of analyte and food safety.

Section snippets

Preparation of FMD-G NC

FMD was synthesized by a one-step hydrothermal approach. Firstly, 0.4 g MnSO4·H2O and 1.0 g KMnO4 were mixed in 30 mL water and stirred in a water bath at 80 °C until dissolved. Then, the mixture was transferred to a 100 mL Teflon-lined stainless steel autoclave, reacting at 140 °C for 1 h. After cooling down the room temperature (RT), products were centrifuged for 10 min and washed with ethanol and water, dried at 80 °C in air (da Silva et al., 2018).

To decorate the GNPs on the surfaces of

Principle of FMD-G-PITS

The fabrication process of the 3D FMD-G-Ab photothermal-sensing probe was illustrated in the Scheme 1A. In the proposed study, GNPs were synthesized by the modified Frens synthesis methods, which were deposited on the surface of hydrothermally synthesized FMD. Due to the good physical adsorption ability of GNPs, a highly specific photothermal probe (FMD-G-Ab) was prepared by labeling the anti-DON Abs to FMD-G NC.

The PITS was operated based on the competitive Ab-antigen reaction (Scheme 1B). The

Conclusion

In summary, by utilizing FMD-G-Ab as photothermal-sensing probe, a novel PITS was developed for sensitive DON detecting. The proposed sensor device has obvious advantages of using a small portable instrument, which are easy to use and rapid test in 60 min (including 45 min of samples preparation). The mall GNPs deposited on the surface of FMD improved the PTCP and provided sufficient adsorption sites for Abs coupling. Compared with the naked-eye method observing, the PITS could provide a

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Meng Zhang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Tong Bu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Feier Bai: Validation, Visualization. Shuang Zhao: Visualization. Yongming Tian: Visualization. Kunyi He: Visualization. Yijian Zhao: Visualization. Xiaohan Zheng: Visualization. Li Wang: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the kind support from Talented Program (A279021724), and Northwest A&F University funding (Nos. Z111021601).

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These authors contributed equally to this work.

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