Abstract
Herein, the boron radical active sites of boron carbon oxynitride quantum dots (BCNO QDs) are electrically excited to produce boron radicals (B•) for catalyzing peroxydisulfate (S2O82–) as a coreactant to accelerate the generation of abundant sulfate radicals (SO4•–) for significant enhancement in the electrochemiluminescence (ECL) efficiency of BCNO QDs, which overcome the defect of traditional carbon-based QDs with low ECL efficiency. Impressively, under extremely low concentration of S2O82– solution, the BCNO QDs/S2O82– system could exhibit high ECL emission, realizing environmental friendliness and excellent biocompatibility for sensitive bioanalysis. As a proof-of-concept, BCNO QDs, a new generation of ECL emitters with high ECL efficiency, were successfully used in the ultrasensitive determination of microRNA-21, which pushes the exploration of new ECL emitters and broadens the application in the field of clinical diagnosis, ECL imaging, and molecular devices.
Funding Information
  • China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M663418)
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (21675129, 21775124, 21974108)
  • Postdoctoral Research Project Special Foundation of Chongqing (7820100368)

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