A novel electrochemiluminescent biosensor based on resonance energy transfer between poly(9,9-di-n-octylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl) and 3,4,9,10-perylenetetracar-boxylic acid for insulin detection

An electrochemiluminescencent (ECL) biosensor was designed for the determination of insulin using a novel ECL resonance energy transfer (ECL-RET) strategy. In this strategy, carboxyl poly(9,9-dioctyfluorenyl-2,7-diyl) dots (PFO dots) were worked as ECL donor and 3,4,9,10-perylenetetracar-boxylic acid (PTCA) exploited as ECL acceptor, and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) employed as the coreactant. The ECL donor and ECL acceptor were separately labeled with primary antibody (Ab1) and secondary antibody (Ab2), forming a sensing interface to the analyte target, insulin. In this expected sandwich-type ECL biosensor, PFO dots acted as sensing platform and PTCA employed as labels to quench the ECL emission of PFO dots. During the determination process, ECL signal of PFO dots was decreased in a gradual way by the increase of insulin concentration, and the quenching mechanism was also investigated. Under the optimal experimental conditions, the constructed biosensor exhibited an excellent performance, including a wide linear range from 1.0 × 10−5 ng/mL to 1.0 × 102 ng/mL, low detection limit of 3.0 × 10−6 ng/mL, good stability and selectivity for the detection of insulin. This pair of PFO-PTCA, as a new donor-acceptor pair in ECL-RET system, would provide a promising platform for bioanalysis in ECL field.