Vitamin C derivatives as new coreactants for tris(2,2′-bipyridine)ruthenium(II) electrochemiluminescence

Vitamin C derivatives (VCDs) have been widely used as the alternative and stable sources of vitamin C, and accordingly exhibit many new applications, such as anti-tumor and central nervous system drug delivery. In this study, their Ru(bpy)32+ electrochemiluminescence (ECL) properties have been investigated for the first time using well-known ascorbyl phosphate and ascorbyl palmitate as representative VCDs. Ascorbyl phosphate and ascorbyl palmitate are VCDs with different substituted positions. Both of them increase Ru(bpy)32+ ECL, indicating that other VCDs may also enhance Ru(bpy)32+ ECL signal. The calibration plot for ascorbyl phosphate is linear from 3 × 10−6 to 1.0 × 10−3 M with a detection limit of 1.4 × 10−6 M at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3. The relative standard deviation is 3.6% for six replicate measurements of 0.01 mM ascorbyl 2-phosphate solution. The proposed method is about one order of magnitude more sensitive than electrochemical and UV–vis methods for the determination of ascorbyl phosphate, and is used successfully for the determination of ascorbyl phosphate in whitening and moisturising body wash.

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► Ru(bpy)32+ electrochemiluminescence of vitamin C derivatives have been investigated.
► Ascorbyl phosphate and ascorbyl palmitate show intense electrochemiluminescence.
► Ascorbyl 2-phosphate was detected with high sensitivity.
► This study provides a new way to detect vitamin C derivatives.