A novel multiple signal amplifying immunosensor based on the strategy of in situ-produced electroactive substance by ALP and carbon-based Ag-Au bimetallic as the catalyst and signal enhancer.

In this work, a novel immunosensor was constructed based on the alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in situ generating an electroactive substance by enzymatic hydrolysis the inactive substrates. The new signal-amplified strategy for sensitive detection of HIgG was based on the catalytic oxidation of ALP-generated products, ascorbic acid (AA), using carbon-based Ag-Au bimetallic as the catalyst and signal enhancer. Through a sandwich reaction, ALP-Ab2 bioconjugates were captured on the electrode surface and the amplified signal can be obtained as follows: the ALP catalyzed the inactive substrate L-ascorbic acid 2-phosphate (AAP) to in situ produce AA; AA as an electroactive product then can be directly electro-oxidized to generate electrochemical signal; At the same time, AA could be catalytic oxidized by Ag-Au bimetallic and resulted in the amplification of electrochemical signal; Finally, the oxidation of Ag on the Ag-Au bimetallic maybe further enhance the detection signal. The proposed immunosensor achieved good linear in the range of 0.005-100ngmL-1 with the detection limit of 0.0009ngmL-1 (S/N =3). The proposed immunosensor was successfully applied in the analysis of human IgG in real samples and got satisfied results. The present work demonstrates a general strategy for the design of multifunctional nanomaterials based on carbon-based bimetallic nanoparticles for different applications, such as biosensors, immunosensors and nanocatalysts.