SERS based immunochromatographic assay for rapid and quantitative determination of bisphenol A

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a typical endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC), which has been banned for food packing and baby ­ bottle material due to its potential endocrine harm to human body. In this paper, an easy and rapid immunochromatographic assay (ICA) combined with the technology of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) was fabricated to improve the sensitivity and rapidity for quantitative determination of BPA. After 10 min of a quick chromatographic process, the specific Raman signal on T line of the test strip was measured. Compared with the traditional ICA, the SERS-ICA realized quantitative test and showed the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.1 ng/mL, getting approximately 300-fold lower. The method displayed high specificity and precision with RSD of 4.1%, and the test strip indicated favorable stability for two weeks without loss of activity. For river, tap and commercial drinking water sample, the SERS-ICA results were confirmed by HPLC, and the recoveries of spiked BPA were from 90.80-117.80%. It was shown that the proposed method takes advantages both of SERS and ICA, exhibiting high sensitivity, precision, stability, quantification and rapidity for field test, expecting a widely useful method for various small molecules in food safety, medical diagnosis and environmental samples.