Electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) application of stainless steel, a robust and cost-effective material, has been developed for the first time. Type 304 stainless steel electrode shows appealing ECL performance in the luminol-HO system. It enables the detection of HO with a linear range from 1 to 1000 nM and a limit of detection of 0.456 nM [signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) = 3]. The ECL method based on type 304 stainless steel electrode is more sensitive, more cost-effective, and much simpler than other ECL methods reported before. Because the stainless steel electrode has excellent performance for HO detection and HO participates in many important enzymatic reactions, applications of stainless steel electrode-based ECL for detection of enzyme activities and enzyme substrates were further investigated by use of glucose oxidase (GODx) and glucose as representative enzyme and substrate. The concentrations of glucose and the activity of GODx were directly proportional to ECL intensities over a range of 0.1-1000 μM and 0.001-0.7 units/mL with limits of detection of 0.076 μM and 0.00087 unit/mL (S/N = 3), respectively. This method was successfully used for determining glucose in honey. Because of their remarkable performance and user-friendly features, stainless steel electrodes hold great promise in various electroanalytical applications, such as biosensing, disposable sensors, and wearable sensors.

Glutathione (GSH) is a crucial antioxidant produced endogenously and plays key roles in biological systems. It is vitally important to design simple, selective, and sensitive methods to sense GSH and monitor changes of GSH concentration. In this work, the cathodic electrochemiluminescence (ECL) of lucigenin in the presence of MnO2 nanosheets at a glassy carbon electrode was utilized for GSH detection. GSH can reduce MnO2 nanosheets into Mn(2+) which can obviously inhibit the ECL of lucigenin. The ECL inhibition efficiencies increase linearly with the concentrations of glutathione in the range of 10 to 2000 nM. The detection limit for GSH measurement is 3.7 nM. This proposed method is highly sensitive, selective, simple, fast, and cost-effective. Moreover, this approach can detect GSH in human serum samples with excellent recoveries, which indicates its promising application under physiological conditions.

Convex hexoctahedral nanocrystals have been synthesized through fast growth kinetics and the use of cetylpyridinium chloride as a capping agent. Monodisperse convex hexoctahedral Pd@Au core-shell nanocrystals with {431} high-index facets are obtained at high reaction rates by using high concentrations of ascorbic acid in the presence of cetylpyridinium chloride. In contrast, octahedral nanocrystals with {111} low-index facets and their {100}-truncated counterparts are formed at low ascorbic acid concentrations. The substitute of cetylpyridinium chloride with cetyltrimethylammonium chloride leads to the generation of concave trisoctahedral Pd@Au core-shell nanocrystals with {331} high-index facets, indicating that cetylpyridinium plays an important role in the formation of convex hexoctahedral nanocrystals. The as-prepared convex hexoctahedral Pd@Au core-shell nanocrystals exhibit remarkable catalytic performances toward electrochemiluminescence compared with truncated octahedral and concave trisoctahedral Pd@Au core-shell nanocrystals.