Evolution of biogenic amine concentrations in foods through their induced chemiluminescence inactivation of layered double hydroxide nanosheet colloids

• Hydrogen bonding could lead to strong blue photoluminescence of the exfoliated LDH nanosheets.
• LDH nanosheets can induce a significant increase in the CL intensity of TCPO–H2O2 system.
• Biogenic amines can selectively inhibit CL intensity of TCPO–H2O2 system.
• The proposed method has been applied to trace biogenic amine evolution of spoiled foods.

Turn-on/off fluorescence and visual sensors through hydrogen bonding recognition have been clearly established in the literature. There is apparently no good reason to disregard hydrogen bonding-induced inactivation of chemiluminescence (CL). In this work, serving as novel CL catalyst and CL resonance energy transfer acceptor (CRET), layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanosheet colloids can induce a significant increase in the CL intensity of bis(2,4,6-trichlorophenyl) oxalate (TCPO)–H2O2 system. On the other hand, biogenic amines can selectively inhibit the CL intensity of the LDH nanosheet-TCPO–H2O2 system as a result of inactivation of photoluminescence LDH nanosheets through the displacement of O–H⋯O bonding by O–H⋯N bonding. In addition, histamine is used as a common indicator of food spoilage, and it is found that the CL intensity is linear with histamine concentration in the range of 0.1–100 µM, and the detection limit for histamine (S/N=3) is 3.2 nM. The proposed method has been successfully applied to trace histamine evolution of spoiled fish and pork meat samples, displaying a time-dependent increase in the biogenic amines levels in such samples.