Low-Triggering-Potential Electrochemiluminescence from a Luminol Analogue Functionalized Semiconducting Polymer Dots for Imaging Detection of Blood Glucose

Abstract

In recent years, semiconducting polymer dots (Pdots) as environmentally friendly and high-brightness electrochemiluminescence (ECL) nanoemitters have attracted intense attention in ECL biosensing and imaging. However, most of the available Pdots have a high ECL excitation potential in the aqueous phase (>1.0 V vs Ag/AgCl), which causes poor selectivity in actual sample detection. Therefore, it is particularly important to construct a simple and universal strategy to lower the trigger potential of Pdots. This work has realized the ECL emission of Pdots at low-trigger-potential based on the electrochemiluminescence resonance energy transfer (ERET) strategy. By covalently coupling the Pdots with a luminol analogue, N-(4-aminobutyl)-N-ethylisoluminol (ABEI), the ABEI-Pdots showed an anodic ECL emission with a low onset potential of +0.34 V and a peak potential at +0.45 V (vs Ag/AgCl), which was the lowest trigger potential reported so far. We further explored this low-triggering-potential ECL for imaging detection of glucose in buffer and serum. By imaging the ABEI-Pdots-modified screen-printed electrodes (SPCE) at +0.45 V for 16 s, the ECL imaging method could quantify the glucose concentration in buffer from 10 to 200 μM with detection limits of 3.3 μM, while exhibiting excellent selectivity. When applied to real serum, the results of our method were highly consistent with a commercial blood glucose meter, with the relative errors ranging from 3.2 to 13%. This work provided a universal strategy for constructing low potential Pdots and demonstrated its application potential in complex biological sample analysis.

Engineering Molecular Emission Centers of Carbon Dots to Boost the Electrochemiluminescence for the Detection of Cancer Cells

“…Although the ECL performance of CDs has been improved by modulating the surface defects of CDs, they are still restricted by inferior controllability and poor reproducibility . Importantly, unlike the surface defect-related ECL emission, molecular emission originating from special functional groups such as rubrene, perylene, and luminol, has the advantages of satisfactory controllability and reproducibility. − However, the low ECL quantum yield in the aqueous phase was largely limited by its application in trace analysis of complex systems. , To overcome such drawbacks, we address this challenge by implanting the luminescent molecules into the CDs to engineer the molecular emission centers onto CDs, which leads to the generation of efficient ECL based on a molecular emission path instead of the defect emission path, opening a new route for constructing CDs with excellent controllability and reproducibility.…”

Highly Efficient Aggregation-Induced Electrochemiluminescence of Al(III)-Cbatpy Metal–Organic Gels Obtained by Ultrarapid Self-Assembly for a Biosensing Application

“…Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) is an electrochemically triggered optical radiation process by high-energy electron transfer near the working electrode, which has been extensively used due to its near-zero background, high sensitivity, and wide dynamic range. − When the intimate relevance between ECL and photoluminescence (PL) was considered, aggregation-induced electrochemiluminescence (AIECL) was defined by De Cola and co-workers in 2017 as a rising alliance between aggregation-induced emission (AIE) , and ECL, and the aggregation state achieved a significant increase in the ECL response by restricting free intramolecular rotation and torsion. More recently, the exploited AIECL emitters can be divided into organic and inorganic systems: organic systems include dots − and nanocrystals formed by the aggregation of small organic molecules; inorganic systems include metal complexes ,− and metal nanoclusters, , which show a certain potential in clinical diagnostics, environmental assays, and biomarker detection. , Although the ECL response of the existing AIECL emitters in organic systems is superior to that of the dispersed molecular states in aqueous media, the ECL efficiency is distinctly limited due to the serious inner filter effect and self-quenching effect caused by the too tight arrangement of molecules inside the aggregates.…”

Rapid determination of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid proteins based on 2D/2D MXene/P–BiOCl/Ru(bpy)32+ heterojunction composites to enhance electrochemiluminescence performance

“…And ECL is considered to be a promising assay method for determination of CoVNP owing to its advantages of low background signals, high sensitivity, simple equipment and electrochemical controllability [ [21] , [22] , [23] , [24] ]. This advanced technology has been successfully applied in many researched fields including biomarkers detection [ 25 ], bio-imaging [ 26 ], point-of-care diagnosis [ 27 ], as well as DNA and proteins detection [ 28 , 29 ]. In particular, tris (2,2′-bipyridine) ruthenium (II) (Ru(bpy) 3 2+ ) and its derivatives have acted as ECL reagents on ECL sensors for long time because of their high ECL efficiency.…”