Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are usually employed in bioanalytical techniques (i.e., immuno- and aptamer assays) conjugated with streptavidin (SA) for signal amplification with biotinylated systems. Though this system is particularly advantageous for bioanalytical techniques applications due to the strong non-covalent interaction between both SA and biotin (dissociation constant 10^-14 mol L^-1), the use of AuNPs shows several drawbacks in terms of sensitivity (i.e., Au incomplete ionization) and memory effects. Consequently, it would be advantageous to replace AuNPs with other NPs free from these shortcomings for bioanalytical applications based on ICP-MS detection. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate SA bioconjugation with NPs covering different characteristics (i.e., size, coating and composition) using AuNPs 40, 80 and 100 nm; while AuNPs 100 nm were evaluated with different coatings (i.e., citrate and lipoic acid). In addition, other NPs such as AgNPs, PtNPs, CuO-NPs… were also evaluated. For this purpose, an aptamer assay for thrombin detection was used as analyte model. In addition, since ICP-MS can be operated in single particle mode, the analytical figures of merit of the latter approach was compared to those afforded by the conventional detection approach.