Potential-resolved electrochemiluminescence biosensor for simultaneous determination of multiplex miRNA

The multi-target simultaneous detection strategy based on potential-resolved electrochemiluminescence (ECL) has still been a research hotspot in analytical science, but the limited selection of ECL luminophores hinders the development of this field. Herein, polyethyleneimine functionalized perylene derivatives (PTC-PEI) and luminol functionalized gold nanoparticles (Lu–Au NPs) possessed significantly resolved emission potentials as ECL luminophore. The ternary ECL system was constructed with MoS2 nanoflowers and K2S2O8 as the coreaction accelerator and coreactant respectively, which significantly improved the cathode ECL emission of PTC-PEI. Simultaneously, the anode coreaction accelerator ZnO nanoflowers could promote the anode coreactant dissolved O2 reduction, and extremely enhanced the anode ECL emission of Lu–Au NPs. The proposed strategy addressed the major technical challenge of cross interference and competition of the coreactants for dual-biomarker detection, thus enabling accurate detection of miRNA-205 and miRNA-21 from 10 fM to 100 nM, with detection limits of 2.57 and 1.15 fM, respectively. In general, this work achieved a single-step synchronous detection of dual biomarkers, providing a new idea for the ECL detection of multiple biomarkers, and having potential value in the clinical diagnosis.