Multicomponent supramolecular nanoaggregates with co-emissive electrochemiluminescence

Abstract

The development of particulate electrochemiluminescence (ECL) emitter with high efficiency is challenging due to either the low electrochemical reaction efficiency for nanoparticles with larger sizes or the low quantum efficiency of molecular luminophores in aggregated forms. While the synthesis of aggregation-induced electrochemiluminescence (AI-ECL) luminophores with high quantum efficiency requires complicated procedures, a supramolecular strategy is proposed for constructing multicomponent nanoaggregates with co-emissive ECL. Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) active tetraphenylethylene (TPE) was used as a molecular matrix to disperse the aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) luminophores with high quantum efficiency, boron dipyrromethene (BDP), and rhodamine B (RhB). Co-emissions of both molecular matrix and doped luminophores were achieved. The synergistic effects of the supramolecular interactions for enhancement of emission efficiency were confirmed by spectral measurement and molecular dynamic simulation. Small nanoaggregates with higher ECL efficiency were prepared on microfluidic chips and were used as nanolabels for sensitive ECL immunoassays.