Covalent organic frameworks (COF-300-AR) with unique catalytic performance in luminol chemiluminescence for sensitive detection of serotonin

Abstract The covalent organic frameworks (COFs), as excellently desirable nanomaterials for catalytic applications, used in the chemiluminescence (CL) system is far from fully developed. Herein, in this work, the COF-300-AR as a catalyst notably increasing the CL intensity of luminol system in alkaline solution with no extra oxidants were first put forward. The presence of serotonin can dramatically decrease the CL of luminol-COF-300-AR system, thus causing the concentration-dependent change of the quenching efficiency (I0/IS). By utilizing these phenomena, the excellent CL sensing method was established for the detection of serotonin by coupling with flow injection analysis (FIA). Under the optimum conditions, the CL quenching efficiency had a linear increase with the concentration of serotonin ranging from 10 nM to 800 nM, and the limit of detection was 2.3 nM (S/N = 3). The method was utilized for the detection of serotonin in rat serum sample with satisfactory results.