A novel efficient intramolecular self-enhanced water-soluble iridium-based electrochemiluminescence reagent and its analytical application in aptamer sensor.

In order to overcome the poor solubilities of iridium-based ECL luminophores and explore self-enhanced ECL luminophores, polyethyleneimine (PEI) covalently linked with iridium complex via amide bonds (abbreviated as Ir-PEI) as a new novel intramolecular self-enhanced water-soluble ECL reagent has been unprecedently designed and successfully synthesized in this work. The chemical structure data, FT-IR spectra, photophysical, electrochemical and electrochemiluminescence of this new ECL reagent have been well characterized. In addition, in order to investigate its properties in the real applications, a corresponding new sensitive and specific ECL-based aptasensor to monitor tetracycline (TET) residues in honey and lake water has been further constructed based on this novel self-enhanced reagent of Ir-PEI in this work. This as-prepared intramolecular self-enhanced water-soluble of Ir-PEI illustrated in this work would pave a new avenue to promote the analytical applications of iridium-based ECL luminophores in the future.