Graphite-like Carbon Nitride Nanotube for Electrochemiluminescence Featuring High Efficiency, High Stability, and Ultrasensitive Ion Detection Capability
Bolin Zhao, Yelin Luo, Xiaodan Qu, Qiong Hu, Jinhui Zou, Ying He, Zhenbang Liu, Yuwei Zhang, Yu Bao, Wei Wang, Li Niu
Abstract
Herein, for the first time, we introduced a novel electrochemiluminescence (ECL) luminophore based on a one-dimensional g-C3N4 nanotube using K2S2O8 as the coreactant. The g-C3N4 nanotube/K2S2O8 couple displayed very satisfactory ECL performance, i.e., an ECL efficiency (ΦECL) of 437% (vs 100% for the Ru(bpy)32+/K2S2O8 reference) and excellent ECL stability (the relative standard deviation (RSD) = 0.78%). By contrast, ΦECL and RSD of the control g-C3N4 nanosheet/K2S2O8 couple were merely 196% and 45.34%, respectively. The mechanism study revealed that the g-C3N4 nanotube features a large surface area and much lower interfacial impedance in the porous microstructure, which are beneficial for accelerating the charge transfer rate and stabilizing charge/excitons for ECL. Moreover, using the g-C3N4 nanotube/K2S2O8 system as a sensing platform, excellent Cu2+ detection capability was also achieved. Our work thus triggers a promising g-C3N4 nanomaterial system toward ECL application.