The comparison between light-scattering detectors based on LED and photodiode for immunoprecipitation assays of transferrin and ferritin

Highlights: • Detectors based on LED and photodiode (PD) as light sensors have been compared and examined for immunoprecipitation. • Multicommutated flow system with light-scattering detectors were optimized for detection of transferrin and ferritin. • Both detectors enabled the determination of transferrin but only LED-PD were efficient for detection of serum ferritin. Undoubtedly, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodiodes (PDs) are indispensable optoelectronic devices in modern analytical chemistry. LEDs can serve as either light emitters or detectors, thus being an alternative to the most popular detection systems consisted of PD. In this contribution, a comparison between LED-LED and LED-PD detectors, operating in turbidimetric and nephelometric modes, has been carried out for immunoprecipitation detection of transferrin and ferritin. The greatest emphasis was placed on the study of detectors responses under different measurement conditions including current powering an emitter, amplification gain in the case of PD as detector or the construction of detection cells designed for the Multicommutated Flow Analysis (MCFA). The assumption was to obtain the fully-mechanized system with simple but efficient detection system to enable the determination of iron-binding proteins occurring at different concentration ranges in human body. As a result, the optimized arrangements of LED-LED and LED-PD setups were characterized by similar analytical characteristics, enabling the determination of transferrin with the detection limit (LOD) of 0.2 mg/L and RSDs of 2.8–4.8% for LED-LED, and LOD of 0.1 mg/L and RSDs of 0.9–3.6% for LED-PD. In the case of ferritin detection, only the response of the LED-PD detector was statistically distinguishable in the range of 130–198 μg/L of protein with recorded analytical signal change of 20 mV value. The addition of polymer for signal enhancement provided the increase of response range to 107–253 μg/L, enabling the developed system for detection of pathological serum ferritin levels.