Peroxidase-like activity of mesoporous silica encapsulated Pt nanoparticle and its application in colorimetric immunoassay

Nanomaterial-based artificial enzymes have received great attention in recent year due to their potential application in immunoassay techniques. However, such potential is usually limited by poor dispersion stability or low catalytic activity induced by the capping agent essentially required in the synthesis. In an attempt to address these challenges, here, we studied the novel Pt nanoparticles (NPs) based peroxidase-like mimic by encapsulating Pt NP in mesoporous silica (Pt@mSiO₂ NPs). Compared with other nanomaterial-based artificial enzymes, the obtained Pt@mSiO₂ NPs not only exhibit high peroxidase-like activity but also have good dispersion stability in buffer saline solution when grafted with spacer PEG. Results show that when the thickness of silica shell is about 9 nm the resulting Pt@mSiO₂ NPs exhibit the catalytic activity similar to that of Pt NPs, which is approximately 26 times higher than that of Fe₃O₄ NPs (in terms of K_cat for H₂O₂). Due to the protection of silica shell, the subsequent surface modification with antibody has little effect on their catalytic activity. The analytical performance of this system in detecting hCG shows that after 5 min incubation the limit of detection can reach 10 ng mL⁻¹ and dynamic linear working range is 5–200 ng mL⁻¹. Our findings pave the way for design and development of novel artificial enzyme labeling.