Pyrenecarboxaldehyde encapsulated porous TiO2 nanoreactors for monitoring cellular GSH levels

Recently, ternary electrochemiluminescence (ECL) system has become a hot research topic due to its great potential for improving ECL efficiency by promoting the generation of intermediates. However, it is still a great challenge to increase the utilization rate of intermediates in a ternary ECL system. Herein, we propose a strategy to increase the utilization rate of intermediates by designing pyrenecarboxaldehyde (Pyc) encapsulated porous titania (pTiO2) nanospheres (Pyc@pTiO2) as ECL nanoreactors for an integrated ternary (luminophore/coreactant/co-reaction accelerator, Pyc/S2O82-/TiO2) ECL system construction. Specifically, pTiO2 acted as an ECL co-reaction accelerator, in which Pyc could obtain electrons from the conduction band of TiO2 to produce more SO4˙-, increasing its emissions. Simultaneously, pTiO2 could provide confined reaction spaces to effectively shorten the diffusion distance, extend the lifetime of free radicals, increase the utilization rate of intermediates and improve the efficiency of the ternary ECL system. As a proof of concept, the Pyc@pTiO2 nanoreactors-based sensing platform was successfully constructed to sensitively monitor cellular GSH levels. Overall, this work for the first time proposed an avenue to increase the utilization rate of intermediates in a ternary ECL system, which opened a new route for ECL biosensing in cell analysis applications.