Ultrabright orange-yellow aggregation-induced emission nanoparticles for highly sensitive immunochromatographic quantification of ochratoxin A in corn

Herein, we report a novel aggregation-induced emission nanoparticles (AIENPs)-based immunochromatography assay (ICA) platform to detect ochratoxin A (OTA) using orange-yellow-emitting AIENPs as fluorescent nanoprobes. Immunochromatographic strip is used for the quantitative detection of OTA in crop matrix using AIENPs coupled with anti-OTA ascites. Under optimal conditions, AIENPs-ICA exhibits stronger signal output capacity and higher sensitivity than traditional gold nanoparticles-based ICA. The half-maximal inhibitory concentration is as low as 0.149 ng mL-1, and the limit detection is 0.042 ng mL-1 at 10 % competitive inhibition concentration. The average recovery of AIENPs-ICA ranges from 82.60 % to 113.14 % with the coefficient of variation ranging from 1.26 % to 11.57 %, proving the proposed method possesses good reliability and reproducibility. Moreover, the developed AIENPs-ICA exhibits negligible cross-reactions with other mycotoxins. We believe the presented AIENPs-ICA platform holds promising potential as a powerful tool for on-site detection of OTA and other molecules detection in food samples.