Modification of a nitrocellulose membrane with nanofibers for sensitivity enhancement in lateral flow test strips

Abstract

Lateral-flow analysis (LFA) is a convenient, low-cost, and rapid detection method, which has been widely used for screening of diseases. However, sensitivity enhancement in LFA is still a focus in this field and remains challenging. Herein, we propose an electrospinning coating method to modify the conventional nitrocellulose (NC) membrane and optimize the liquid flow rate for enhancing the sensitivity of the NC based LFA strips in the detection of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) and luteinizing hormone (LH). It can be seen that coating the NC membrane with nitrocellulose fibers could obtain a NC based strip with HCG and LH detection limits of 0.22 and 0.36 mIU mL⁻¹ respectively, and a quantitative linear range of 0.5–500 mIU mL⁻¹. The results show that electrospinning is effective in modifying conventional NC membranes for LFA applications.