Perylenetetracarboxylic acid and carbon quantum dots assembled synergistic electrochemiluminescence nanomaterial for ultra-sensitive carcinoembryonic antigen detection

It is important to design a nice electrochemiluminescence (ECL) biological nanomaterial for fabricating sensitive ECL immunosensor to detect tumor markers. Most reported ECL nanomaterial was decorated by a number of mono-luminophore. Here, we report a novel ECL nanomaterial assembled by dual luminophores perylenetetracarboxylic acid (PTCA) and carbon quantum dots (CQDs). In the ECL nanomaterial, graphene was chosen as nanocarrier. Significant ECL intensity increases are seen in the ECL nanomaterial, which was interpreted with the proposed synergistic promotion ECL meachanism of PTCA and CQDs. Furthermore, this ECL nanomaterial was used to label secondary antibody and fabricate a sandwiched carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) immunosensor. The CEA immunosensor exhibits high sensitivity and the linear semilogarithmical range was from 0.001 fg mL−1 to 1 ng mL−1 with low detection limit 0.00026 fg mL−1. And the CEA immunosensor is also suitable for various cancers' sample detection providing potential specific applications in diagnostics.