Recent Advances in Electrochemiluminescence and Chemiluminescence of Metal Nanoclusters

Abstract

Metal nanoclusters (NCs), including Au, Ag, Cu, Pt, Ni and alloy NCs, have become more and more popular sensor probes with good solubility, biocompatibility, size-dependent luminescence and catalysis. The development of electrochemiluminescent (ECL) and chemiluminescent (CL) analytical methods based on various metal NCs have become research hotspots. To improve ECL and CL performances, many strategies are proposed, from metal core to ligand, from intermolecular electron transfer to intramolecular electron transfer. Combined with a variety of amplification technology, i.e., nanostructure-based enhancement and biological signal amplification, highly sensitive ECL and CL analytical methods are developed. We have summarized the research progresses since 2016. Also, we discuss the current challenges and perspectives on the development of this area.

From M6 to M12, M19 and M38 molecular alloy Pt–Ni carbonyl nanoclusters: selective growth of atomically precise heterometallic nanoclusters

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Different chemical and physical properties may arise, and these can find several applications particularly regarding catalysis, biology, biomedicine and sensors. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] From the structural perspective, alloying may occur randomly or in an ordered way. [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] In the latter case, "ordered" may correspond to site-specific doping, formation of well defined ordered phases, segregation or related phenomena where the different metals occupy well defined positions.…”

Strategies for Enhancing the Sensitivity of Electrochemiluminescence Biosensors

“…Recently, certain metal nanoclusters have also been found to possess ECL properties [ 71 ]. To date, gold nanoclusters have emerged as a new class of ECL emitters due to their stable optical and electrochemical properties, monodispersity size, and low- and well-defined band gap and high atomic accuracy [ 72 ]. Nie et al [ 73 ] reported a novel luminophore, a Au NC-based metal-organic framework (Au NC-based MOF) that showed 10-fold-enhanced anodic ECL efficiency over aggregated GSH-Au NCs in an aqueous solution, and when rutin was the model analyte, a low detection limit of 10 nM was achieved.…”

Supramolecular Self-Assembly of Atomically Precise Silver Nanoclusters with Chiral Peptide for Temperature Sensing and Detection of Arginine

“…As a bridge between atom and nanoparticle, metal nanoclusters (metal NCs, mainly Au, Ag and Cu) which are composed of a few to hundreds of mental atoms and covered with organic ligands on the surface of the metal core, have been receiving extensive attention due to their important roles in the fields of catalysis, sensing, electrochemistry, energy transfer and biomedicine [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Among various applications, metal nanoclusters are widely used as sensors because of their sensitive responses to temperature, pH value, metal ions and small biological molecules [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ].…”