Ultrasensitive prostate specific antigen monitoring based on electrochemiluminescent immunesystem with synergistic signal amplification effect of resonance energy transfer coupling with K2S2O8-H2O2 dual coreactants

Abstract

• The synergistic effect of coupling dual coreactants with the surface plasmon resonance of AgNPs enhancement was used as an effective signal amplification strategy. • OH • arising in the process was able to induce the decomposition of S 2 O 8 2− into SO 4 • − resulting in a vigorous ECL enhancement. • The amplified ECL immunosensor was fabricated for highly-sensitive detection of PSA. • The sensing system provides an alternative charming method for other biomolecules assays. In this work, an effective signal amplification strategy was used for the fabrication of the ultrasensitive sandwich-typed electrochemiluminescence (ECL) immunosensing platform. The combining of K 2 S 2 O 8 -H 2 O 2 dual coreactants with the localized surface plasmon resonance of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) resulted in the remarkable increase of ECL response. Noticeably, because of the perfect overlap between the plasmon spectra of AgNPs and the ECL emission spectra of graphitic carbon nitride quantum dots (g-CNQDs), a plasmon-enhanced ECL phenomenon was proved in g-CNQDs/AgNPs system result from high efficient energy transfer. Besides, the ECL signal of the ECL immunosensor was greatly improved in the presence of K 2 S 2 O 8 -H 2 O 2 dual coreactants. Consequently, this synergistic amplified ECL sensing platform was applied for the specific prostate specific antigen (PSA) analysis. Under the optimum conditions, the immunoassay strategy demonstrated excellent sensing performance with a wide linear concentration of PSA from 1.0 × 10 − 5 ng mL −1 to 500 ng mL −1 and a detection limit of 0.0046 pg mL −1 (S/N = 3). Considering the favorable analytical feedback in actual serum samples assay, the developed strategy indicated an enormous potential for biomarkers analysis.