Herein,
the boron radical active sites of boron carbon oxynitride
quantum dots (BCNO QDs) are electrically excited to produce boron
radicals (B•) for catalyzing peroxydisulfate (S2O8
2–) as a coreactant to accelerate
the generation of abundant sulfate radicals (SO4
•–) for significant enhancement in the electrochemiluminescence (ECL)
efficiency of BCNO QDs, which overcome the defect of traditional carbon-based
QDs with low ECL efficiency. Impressively, under extremely low concentration
of S2O8
2– solution, the BCNO
QDs/S2O8
2– system could exhibit
high ECL emission, realizing environmental friendliness and excellent
biocompatibility for sensitive bioanalysis. As a proof-of-concept,
BCNO QDs, a new generation of ECL emitters with high ECL efficiency,
were successfully used in the ultrasensitive determination of microRNA-21,
which pushes the exploration of new ECL emitters and broadens the
application in the field of clinical diagnosis, ECL imaging, and molecular
devices.