Microfluidic chip-based silver nanoparticles aptasensor for colorimetric detection of thrombin

•A colorimetric microfluidic chip-based silver nanoparticles aptasensor was designed.•The detection principle was based on the color of AgNPs without signal amplification.•This system combined microfluidic chip with colorimetric quantitative analysis.•The detection limit of thrombin was as low as 20 pM with excellent specificity.

In this paper, a colorimetric silver nanoparticles aptasensor (aptamer-AgNPs) was developed for simple and straightforward detection of protein in microfluidic chip. Surface-functionalized microfluidic channels were employed as the capture platform. Then the mixture of target protein and aptamer-AgNPs were injected into the microfluidic channels for colorimetric detection. To demonstrate the performance of this detection platform, thrombin was chosen as a model target protein. Introduction of thrombin could form a sandwich-type complex involving immobilized AgNPs. The amount of aptamer-AgNPs on the complex augmented along with the increase of the thrombin concentration causing different color change that can be analyzed both by naked eyes and a flatbed scanner. This method is featured with low sample consumption, simple processes of microfluidic platform and straightforward colorimetric detection with aptamer-AgNPs. Thrombin at concentrations as low as 20 pM can be detected using this aptasensor without signal amplification. This work demonstrated that it had good selectivity over other proteins and it could be a useful strategy to detect other targets with two affinity binding sites for ligands as well.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide