Application of upconversion luminescent-magnetic microbeads with weak background noise and facile separation in ochratoxin A detection

Ochratoxin A (OTA), the most harmful and abundant ochratoxin, is chemically stable and commonly existed in foodstuffs. In this work, upconversion luminescent-magnetic microbeads (UCLMMs) -based cytometric bead array for OTA detection with a less reagent consumption and high sensitivity has been established and optimized. In UCLMMs, upconversion nanocrystals (UCNs) for optical code present a weak background noise and no spectral cross talk between the encoding signals and target labels under two excitation conditions to improve detection sensitivity. While the superparamagnetic Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles (Fe₃O₄ NPs) aim for rapid analysis. The results show that the developed method has a sensitivity of 9.553 ppt below HPLC with a 50-μL sample and can be completed in <2 h with good accuracy and high reproducibility. Therefore, different colors of UCLMMs will become a promising assay platform for multiple mycotoxins after further improvement.