Electrochemiluminescence energy transfer-promoted ultrasensitive immunoassay using near-infrared-emitting CdSeTe/CdS/ZnS quantum dots and gold nanorods.

Lingling Li, Ying Chen, Qian Lu, Jing Ji, Yuanyuan Shen, Mi Xu, Rong Fei, Guohai Yang, Kui Zhang, Jian-Rong Zhang, Jun-Jie Zhu

Index: Sci. Rep. 3 , 1529, (2013)

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Abstract

The marriage of energy transfer with electrochemiluminescence has produced a new technology named electrochemiluminescence energy transfer (ECL-ET), which can realize effective and sensitive detection of biomolecules. To obtain optimal ECL-ET efficiency, perfect energy overlapped donor/acceptor pair is of great importance. Herein, we present a sensitive ECL-ET based immunosensor for the detection of tumor markers, using energy tunable CdSeTe/CdS/ZnS double shell quantum dots (QDs) and gold nanorods (GNRs) as the donor and acceptor, respectively. Firstly a facile microwave-assisted strategy for the synthesis of green- to near-infrared-emitting CdSeTe/CdS/ZnS QDs with time- and component-tunable photoluminescence was proposed. And, on the basis of the adjustable optical properties of both CdSeTe/CdS/ZnS QDs and GNRs, excellent overlap between donor emission and acceptor absorption can be obtained to ensure effective ECL-ET quenching, thus improving the sensing sensitivity. This method represents a novel approach for versatile detection of biomolecules at low concentrations.