Photoelectrochemical endocrine-disrupting chemicals aptasenor based on resonance energy transfer between SnSe/GR and AuNPs along with GSSG for signal amplification

Abstract

The continued expansion of the fields of photoelectrochemical (PEC) aptasensor has guided the development of photoactive materials that can generate electron-photo pairs to emerge photocurrent. However, only such an improvement has an insatiable appetite for the application of molecular level for PEC aptasensor due to the limited quantity of the bioprobes immobilized on the working electrode. Here, we successfully synthetized SnSe/graphene (SnSe/GR) nanohybrids as a photoactive material with a strong photocurrent signal. The constructed bioprobe, DNA/gold nanoparticles/glutathione disulfide (DNA/AuNPs/GSSG), decreased photocurrent effectively. GSSG, an electron acceptor, was designed as a quencher in the bioprobe to overcome a part of shortcomings of DNA/AuNPs in a way. This was owing to the resonance energy transfer (RET) between AuNPs and SnSe/GR, and GSSG to accept photoelectrons, so that the photocurrent response was obviously decreased comparing to the PEC response of SnSe/GR/CPE. Based on this, probe/SnSe/GR/CPE was built as a signal-on PEC aptasensor to detect endocrine-disrupting chemicals using bisphenol A as model. This signal-on PEC aptasensor showed a linear response in the range of 0.01–7 μM and a limit of detection of 3 nM for bisphenol A. And this method presented a promising prospect for sensitive and accurate analysis of other biological molecules between aptamers and corresponding targets at low levels.