Dual Enhancement of Gold Nanocluster Electrochemiluminescence: Electrocatalytic Excitation and Aggregation-Induced Emission

Huaping Peng; Zhongnan Huang; Haohua Deng; Weihua Wu; Kaiyuan Huang; Zhenglian Li; Wei Chen; Juewen Liu

doi:10.1002/anie.201913445

Dual Enhancement of Gold Nanocluster Electrochemiluminescence: Electrocatalytic Excitation and Aggregation-Induced Emission

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2020 Jun 15;59(25):9982-9985. doi: 10.1002/anie.201913445. Epub 2019 Dec 4.

Authors

Huaping Peng¹, Zhongnan Huang¹, Haohua Deng¹, Weihua Wu¹, Kaiyuan Huang¹, Zhenglian Li¹, Wei Chen¹, Juewen Liu²

Affiliations

¹ Higher Educational Key Laboratory for Nano Biomedical Technology of Fujian Province, Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, Faculty of Pharmacy, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, 350108, P. R. China.
² Department of Chemistry, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada.

PMID: 31691480
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201913445

Abstract

Ligand-protected gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) have emerged as a new class of electrochemiluminescence (ECL) luminophores for their interesting catalytic and emission properties, although their quantum yield (Φ_ECL ) in aqueous medium is low with a poor mechanistic understanding of the ECL process. Now it is shown that drying AuNCs on electrodes enabled both enhanced electrochemical excitation by an electrocatalytic effect, and enhanced emission by aggregation-induced ECL (AIECL) for 6-aza-2-thiothymine (ATT) protected AuNCs with triethylamine (TEA) as a coreactant. The dried ATT-AuNCs/TEA system resulted in highly stable visual ECL with a Φ_ECL of 78 %, and a similar enhancement was also achieved with methionine-capped AuNCs. The drying enabled dual-enhancement mechanism has solved a challenging mechanistic problem for AuNC ECL probes, and can guide further rational design of ECL emitters.

Keywords: biosensors; drying; electrocatalysis; gold nanoclusters; visual luminescence.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't