Electrochemical coding strategies using metallic nanoprobes for biosensing applications

•Electrochemical metallic nanoprobes for electrochemical biosensing applications.•Metallic nanoprobes can be very useful when a moderate multiplexing is required.•Functionalization of nanoprobes provides almost unlimited combinations.

As it is well known, electrochemical biosensors offer several very interesting advantages such as portability, low power consumption, low price, etc. However, in most of the cases these types of biosensors are weak in the simultaneous multiplexing detection. In general, these techniques are developed for single analyte detection, and when multiplexing is required, spatial separation is applied. As an alternative, the possibility of using electrochemical nanoprobes based biosensor in different configurations allows the implementation of multiplexed devices and opens the door to the point-of-care systems.This review is focused in the use of electrochemical metallic-nanoprobes (electroactive metallic-nanoparticles chemically modified with a specific biological element) for electrochemical biosensing applications. First, the manuscript focus their attention in the electroactive nanoparticles synthesis, and then in the most common conjugation protocols. Finally, the work discuss about the usefulness of these nanoprobes for biosensing applications, especially in the fields of clinical diagnosis and food safety.