Metal enhanced chemiluminescence nanosensor for ultrasensitive bioassay based on silver nanoparticles modified functional DNA dendrimer

Quantification strategy of absolute chemiluminescence efficiency for systems of luminol with hydrogen peroxide

An important feature to be determined in mechanistic studies on chemiluminescence (CL) is its quantum efficiency, which can give significant chemical reaction information on the influence of the reactant structures and reaction conditions. However, most of the previous quantitative measurements of luminescence and quantum efficiencies are complex and incomplete. To overcome the inconvenience and underestimated quantum efficiency in each measurement, we report a simple and highly effective strategy to determine the absolute CL quantum efficiencies for three systems of luminol with hydrogen peroxide by means of a spectrometer along with an integrating sphere. The integrating sphere facilitated collection of all the emitted light and then transferred it to the spectrometer via an optical fiber proportionally. The CL quantum efficiency was determined by taking the ratio of total photons generated in the reaction system to the number of the limiting reactant molecules consumed. Absolute CL efficiencies of three luminol-H2O2 reaction systems with varied reactant concentrations or coreactants were found to be 37 %, 7.0 % and 6.6 % in a time course, which are much higher than those previously reported values of 1.0-1.3 %. Due to our complete photon collection design, a higher absolute CL efficiency can be realized. Furthermore, spooling CL spectra also provided a powerful visualization tool to observe the real-time CL evolution and devolution, allowing the study on kinetics of CL reaction systems. The above investigations are anticipated to promote further development of CL methodologies and their applications.

Cu/Au nanoclusters with peroxidase-like activity for chemiluminescence detection of α-amylase

Herein, a novel chemiluminescence method was developed for efficient and sensitive detection of α-amylase activity. α-Amylase is closely related to our life, and α-amylase concentration is a marker for the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis. In this paper, Cu/Au nanoclusters with peroxidase-like activity were prepared using starch as a stabilizer. Cu/Au nanoclusters can catalyze H₂O₂ to generate reactive oxygen species and increase the CL signal. The addition of α-amylase makes the starch decompose and causes the nanoclusters to aggregate. The aggregation of the nanoclusters caused them to increase in size and decrease in the peroxidase-like activity, resulting in a decrease in the CL signal. α-Amylase was detected by the CL method of signal changes caused by dispersion-aggregation in the range of 0.05-8 U mL^-1 with a low detection limit of 0.006 U mL^-1. The chemiluminescence scheme based on the luminol-H₂O₂-Cu/Au NC system is of great significance for the sensitive and selective determination of α-amylase in real samples, and the detection time is short. This work provides new ideas for the detection of α-amylase based on the chemiluminescence method and the signal lasts for a long time, which can realize timely detection.

Utilizing dual carriers assisted by enzyme digestion chemiluminescence signal enhancement strategy simultaneously detect tumor markers CEA and AFP

To measure two tumor biomarkers, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), a dual-carrier CL sensor with restriction enzyme digestion (Exo I) and aptamer technology utilizing gold nanoparticles (hydroxylamine amplification) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) as the CL signal enhancement in the sensing strategy was formed. These nanoparticles and nano-enzyme were precisely detected and tagged to the appropriate position attributable to the particular recognition of biotin and streptavidin. In this sensing strategy, target markers were further enriched and recognized sensitively by CL following enrichment, and matching strong chemical signals were collected under luminol catalysis, allowing for marker identification. For CEA (0.1-80 ng/mL) and AFP (2-500 ng/mL), the proposed method has a large linear range, with detection limits of 36.6 pg/mL and 0.94 ng/mL, respectively.