Rapid immunological detection of copper ions using fluorescence immunochromatographic assay

One-step fluorescence immunochromatographic assay (FICA) has been developed using fluorescent microspheres-labelled monoclonal antibody (McAb) probe for the rapid detection of copper ions in herbal plants and soil samples were investigated in this study. The results can be read by the fluorescence reader according to the fitted standard curve equation. Under optimal conditions, detecting copper ions with FICA can be done within 15 min with a LOD (limit of detection) of 0.2 mu g/L, and was very useful for the rapid onsite testing. A total of 31 solid samples were pre-treated by microwave digestion combined with cation exchange solid phase extraction and prepared as test samples for FICA and ICP-AES. The two methods showed good relativity with correlation coefficients of 0.924 and 0.969 in herbal plants and soil samples for copper detection, respectively. We hope that our research can help promote the daily monitoring of heavy metal pollution effectively.