Apart from the reported energy transfer mechanism of aggregation-induced electrochemiluminescence (AI-ECL) enhancement, a new strategy named restriction of intramolecular motions-driven ECL (RIM-ECL) enhancement is first proposed based on the phenomenon of a very strong electrochemiluminescence observed on the hexagonal tetraphenylethylene microcrystals (TPE MCs) in aqueous solution. Compared to TPE in molecule-isolation state with faint ECL, TPE in aggregate state (TPE MCs) showed a significantly enhanced ECL that was due to the restriction of intramolecular motions (RIM). Inspired by the unique luminescence characteristic of TPE MCs, we integrated the novel ECL emitter of TPE MCs and target-activated bipedal DNA walker together to fabricate a sensitive "off-on" ECL biosensor for Mucin 1 (MUC1) assay, which exhibited desirable linear response for a concentration scope from 1 fg/mL to 1 ng/mL with a low detection limit of 0.29 fg/mL. The RIM enhanced ECL demonstrated by the TPE MCs provides a new chapter in the exploration of aggregated organic emitters for further applications.

A sensitive electrochemiluminescence (ECL) biosensor was developed for glutathione (GSH) detection based on a novel Ru(bpy) 2 (cpaphen) 2+ /TPrA/TiO 2 ternary ECL system with Mn 2+ as substitute target for signal amplification. Specifically, the TiO 2 nanoneedles (TiO 2 NNs) were used as the coreaction accelerator for the first time to promote the oxidation process of coreactant tripropylamine (TPrA) in the anode and significantly increase the ECL signal of Ru(bpy) 2 (cpaphen) 2+ for an amplified initial signal. Meanwhile, a novel target conversion strategy for GSH was developed by reducing MnO 2 nanosheets to Mn 2+ as a substitute target, which played the role of a coenzyme factor for cleaving DNA double strands intercalated with Ru-(bpy) 2 (cpaphen) 2+ to markedly weaken initial signal. As a result, the novel "on−off" biosensor achieved a sensitive detection of GSH range from 5 μM to 215 μM with a detection limit of 0.33 μM. Importantly, the proposed strategy enriched the application of Ru complex and TPrA ECL system in bioanalytical applications, and provided a new signal amplification strategy for bioactive small molecules.

We have fabricated gold nanorod graphitic nanocapsule (AuNR@G) doped poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/chitosan (CS) hydrogels, which possessed highly efficient and stable photothermal antibacterial properties under the irradiation of a near-infrared laser.

In this work, a sensitive electrochemiluminescent assay of mucin 1 (MUC1) was developed with the advantages of target recycling amplification strategy and effective MoS nanoflower (MoS NF)-based signal probe. Briefly, the target MUC1 triggered enzyme-free recycling and a double-output amplification process was executed to acquire masses of single-stranded DNA as a mimic target, which further participated in the catalytic hairpin assembly process for signal amplification. Meanwhile, MoS NFs were prepared as an effective co-reaction accelerator, which not only possessed excellent catalytic performance for HO decomposition to largely enhance the luminous intensity of N-(aminobutyl)- N-(ethylisoluminol) (ABEI)-HO electrochemiluminescence system but also offered a desirable platform for ABEI-functionalized Ag nanoparticles (ABEI-Ag complexes) loading via Ag-S binding. The experimental results showed the proposed aptasensor had a good linear relationship in the range of 1 fg/mL to 10 ng/mL for MUC1 detection and the limit of detection was 0.58 fg/mL (S/N = 3). In addition, the aptasensor had nice stability and selectivity and huge potential to be applied in clinical research.

A sensitive electrochemiluminescent (ECL) aptasensor consisting of a novel ECL signal tag of DNA nanoflowers (DNA NFs) and a highly efficient target conversion strategy for the MUC1 assay was developed, which not only increased the stability for luminophore loading, but also greatly improved the detection sensitivity.