PCN-224/nano-zinc oxide nanocomposite-based electrochemiluminescence biosensor for HPV-16 detection by multiple cycling amplification and hybridization chain reaction

A new electrochemiluminescence (ECL) biosensing platform using PCN-224/nano-zinc oxide composites coupled with cyclic amplification and hybridization chain reaction (HCR) was designed for HPV-16 virus detection. Zirconium-based metal organic frameworks (MOFs) with stable structure and large surface area can be used as substrate material for ECL biosensing, but single PCN-224 was not stable enough on electrode because of poor water solubility. Hence, a hybrid substrate material based on PCN-224, nano-zinc oxide and polyacrylamide were proposed for the first time. Due to the good film-forming property of polyacrylamide, the stability of PCN-224 nanocomposites on the electrode was significantly improved. Especially, zinc oxide can greatly accelerate reduction of potassium persulfate, thus ECL signal of the composites was much raised. Moreover, target HPV-16 quantity was tremendously amplified via exonuclease-based cycling cleavage of DNA and produced abundant DNA S1, which was further initiated cycling cleavage of capture DNA followed by HCR on the electrode, thus a large amount of dopamine (DA) were introduced to effectively quench ECL for highly sensitive “signal-off” detection of HPV. This strategy combines zinc oxide enhanced stable ECL of PCN-224, high amplification efficiency of multiple cycling of targets, and HCR-amplified signal for target assay, showing promising potential in various biosensing and clinical applications. • A novel PCN 224-ZnO-polyacrylamide nanocomposite with excellent ECL performance and stability was prepared. • A new ECL biosensor based on PCN-224 composite and multiple amplification was designed for HPV-16 detection. • A large amount of DA were introduced to effectively quench ECL to achieve “signal-off” detection of HPV.