Assessment of Disulfide-linked Gold Nanoparticles as Colorimetric Sensor for Human Chorionic Gonadotropin Detection

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are a highly versatile compound to be used in sensing components due to their unique physicochemical and optical properties. Due to its flexibility for surface conjugation, glutathione disulfide-linked gold nanoparticle (AuNP-GSSG) was produced in this study to assess its sensing performance as a colorimetric sensor for human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG). Spectroscopic characterization of AuNP-GSSG confirmed the conjugation of GSSG onto the surface of AuNPs. AuNP-GSSG also showed high sensory performance with good linearity and low detection limit. However, due to the high percentage of interference, usage of AuNP-GSSG as an HCG sensor requires further pre-treatment step to reduce the interference and increase the sensor accuracy.