A highly sensitive Photothermal Immunochromatographic test strip for detection of aflatoxin B1 based on CoS@TA Nanospheres

A novel photothermal immunochromatographic test strip (PITS) with tannic acid (TA) modified cobalt sulfide (CoS) nanospheres (CoS@TA) as immuno-probe element was developed for the detection of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1). CoS nanospheres (CoS NPs) with excellent photothermal conversion efficiency (eta = 47.5 %) was synthesized and skillfully chelated with TA to improve its dispersion, biocompatibility, and chromatographic properties. After modification, the CoS@TA coupled with monoclonal antibody (mAb) against AFB1 (CoS@TA-mAb) by simple physical adsorption. The CoS@TA based PITS achieved highly sensitive detection of AFB1 with the limit of detection in photothermal signal (photothermal-LOD) of 0.00503 mu g/L, which was 19.88-fold higher than the LOD in visual signal (visual-LOD, 0.1 mu g/L). The application of TA in the modification of CoS provided ideas to improve the properties of functional nanomaterials such as dispersion and biocompatibility, and the application of CoS@TA in PITS construction laid a methodological foundation for further improving the detection sensitivity of trace targets.