The amphiphilic polymer coating can not only transfer hydrophobic NPs into water soluble, but also providing a thick shell responsible for the strong physisorption to proteins without significantly changing their spatial conformations.

NP with discrete proteins can be simply obtained by a simple mixing procedure followed by a gel electrophoresis separation, and the resulting conjugates are robust enough to resist common separation techniques like gel electrophoresis.

In combination with the universal amphiphilic polymer coating strategy and the physisorption mediated protein–NP conjugation, proteins like BSA can be effectively conjugated to different materials such as noble metal, semiconductor and magnetic NPs.

In contrast to chemical coupling methods, the physisorption mediated protein–NP conjugation holds facile, robust and reversible advantages, which may find wide applications in nano-biomedicine field.