Bimetallic synergy and aggregation-induced emission enhanced electrochemiluminescence aptasensor for detection of aflatoxin B1.

Authors

Hongyu Xue, Yige Li, Tiantian Ji, Haoyi Ren, Shushu Li, Li Liu, Mingzhe Jiang, Yu Qi, Chenglin Hong

Published in

Analytica chimica acta. Volume 1421. Pages 346002. Nov 01, 2026. Epub Jul 21, 2026.

Abstract

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), a highly carcinogenic mycotoxin widely contaminating agricultural products, poses a severe threat to food safety and human health, thereby necessitating the development of detection methods. Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) has emerged as an ideal analytical technique due to its near-zero background and exceptional sensitivity. However, traditional monometallic gold nanoclusters (Au NCs) suffer from inherently low ECL efficiency and poor stability. Herein, this work proposes a dual-enhancement strategy to construct a robust "signal-off-on" ECL biosensing platform for the detection of AFB1. Specifically, silver (Ag) is co-doped to synthesize GSH-Au/Ag NCs, significantly boosting the intrinsic ECL intensity via a bimetallic synergistic effect. Subsequently, these bimetallic NCs are in situ encapsulated within a metal-organic framework (ZIF-8). The rigid spatial confinement of ZIF-8 strictly triggers the restriction of intramolecular motions (RIM), thereby activating aggregation-induced emission (AIE) for secondary ECL signal amplification while endowing the GSH-Au/Ag NCs@ZIF-8 composite with outstanding structural stability. Integrating the intensely luminescent GSH-Au/Ag NCs@ZIF-8 emitter with the highly efficient Cu₂O@PDA quencher, the developed ECL sensor exhibits a broad linear range from 0.001 to 100 ng/mL with a remarkable limit of detection (LOD) of 0.1186 pg/mL. This work not only provides profound insights into the synergistic ECL enhancement mechanisms driven by bimetallic doping and spatial confinement but also offers a promising paradigm for the precise quantification of trace mycotoxins in food safety monitoring.

PMID:
42702435
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.