Multifunctional Microspheres Encoded with Upconverting Nanocrystals and Magnetic Nanoparticles for Rapid Separation and Immunoassays

Immunoassays based on the downconversion target materials (organic dyes or quantum dots) lead to fairly strong spectral interference between the coded signal and reporter signal, which seriously affects the detection accuracy and hampers their applications. In this work, a new kind of upconverting nanocrystals encoded magnetic microspheres (UCNMMs) were designed and prepared successfully to solve the problem mentioned above. The UCNMMs were obtained by incorporating magnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles and upconverting nanocrystals with polystyrene microspheres. Due to that upconverting nanocrystals (UCNs) and reporter signals are excitated by near-infrared and UV/visible light separately, immunoassays based on UCNMMs do not occur optical spectral interferences. Furthermore, these new functionalized UCNMMs have excellent properties in binding biomolecules and fast separating, which would have large potential applications in multiplexed assays.