A portable Au@Pt nanozyme-based colorimetric immunosensor for highly sensitive on-site detection of silk textile artifacts.

Silk artifacts serve as crucial empirical evidence for tracing ancient textile craftsmanship and civilizational exchanges. However, silk fibroin is highly susceptible to severe degradation under the combined effects of temperature and humidity fluctuations, microbial erosion, and other environmental factors after long-term burial, making it extremely difficult to confirm its presence under field conditions. This predicament has long rendered the rapid on‑site screening of silk fibroin (SF) in ancient silk artifacts in archaeology. To address this problem, a portable colorimetric immunosensor integrating immunomagnetic enrichment and gold-platinum (Au@Pt) nanozyme signal amplification was developed for the specific detection of SF in ancient silk artifacts. The immunosensor demonstrated a linear detection range from 1 ng/mL to 10 µg/mL, with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.663 ng/mL. Moreover, the sensor exhibited high specificity, stability, and reproducibility, and its detection results on authentic cultural relic samples were in complete agreement with those obtained from enzyme‑linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Thus, the proposed colorimetric immunosensor strikes an optimal balance between trace detection sensitivity and on-site applicability and provides a practical and efficient tool for the on‑site rapid preliminary screening of archaeological textile artifacts.