Portable reconfigurable instrument for analytical determinations using disposable electrochemiluminescent screen-printed electrodes

A portable reconfigurable instrument platform for electrochemiluminescence (ECL)-based disposable screen-printed electrodes is described. The reader unit consists of a potentiostat and a photodiode as a light-to-current converter integrated in the same instrument. For powerful and versatile analog conditioning, a very recent electronic solution has been included: a Field Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) capable of reconfiguring filter and gain stages in real time. To check the instrument's performance as a sensor platform, two luminophores (tris(2,2′bipyridyl)ruthenium(II) and luminol) and two representative correactants widely used, triethylamine and cholesterol, were selected. The calibration functions obtained show a linear dependence with dynamic ranges from 0.05 to 10.0 mg l−1 for triethylamine, and 2.0·10−5-1.4·10−4 M for cholesterol, with detection limits of 0.2 mg l−1 and 1.1·10−5 M, respectively, and a sensor-to-sensor reproducibility (relative standard deviation, RSD) of around 3.2% and 3.3% respectively at the medium-range level. This instrument offers a new advance in the portability of electrochemiluminescent determinations.