Paper-based bipolar electrode-electrochemiluminescence (BPE-ECL) device with battery energy supply and smartphone read-out: A handheld ECL system for biochemical analysis at the point-of-care level

• A handheld paper-based bipolar electrode-electrochemiluminescencesystem was proposed.
• A smartphone was used for read-out of P-BPE-ECL signal.
• A rechargeable battery was used as the power supply of P-BPE-ECL device.
• The proposed system was applied for sensitive detection of H2O2 and glucose.

In this work, a handheld paper-based bipolar electrode-electrochemiluminescence (P-BPE-ECL) system has been proposed. In this system, a rechargeable battery is used for power supply, while a smartphone is applied for read-out of ECL signal. For the P-BPE-ECL, the carbon ink-based BPE and driving electrodes are screen-printed on the paper, and the wax-screen-printing is employed to fabricate microfluidic channels on electrode-patterned paper. Moreover, the luminol/H2O2-based ECL reaction is applied to demonstrate the quantitative ability of the P-BPE-ECL system. Under optimized conditions, H2O2 can be determined over the range of 5–5000 μM, with a detection limit of 1.75 μM, and relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 7.59%, 3.82% and 4.93% for 10, 100 and 1000 μM H2O2 (n = 5). Thus, this system has an acceptable sensitivity, dynamic range, stability and reproducibility. Finally, the applicability of the P-BPE-ECL system is demonstrated for detection of glucose in phosphate buffer solution (PBS) and artificial urine (AU) samples, with the detection limits of 0.017 mM and 0.030 mM, respectively. Moreover, the P-BPE-ECL system has the ability to perform high-throughput detection of glucose. Therefore, the developed system can provide a new platform for many applications such as point-of-care testing, health diagnosis and environmental monitoring.

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