A new luminol chemiluminescence sensor for glucose based on pH-dependent graphene oxide

In this study, graphene oxide (GO) was found to catalyze the luminol-O-2 reaction, which yielded a novel chemiluminescence (CL). Remarkably, the CL emission could be tuned by modulating the pH of the GO dispersion. Transmission electron microscopy, CL spectra, electron spin resonance spectra studies were carried out to investigate the CL mechanism. The results indicate that the CL emission was attributed to the intrinsic catalytic effect of GO acting as the radical generation proliferators and electron transfer accelerators. Based on the GO catalyzed luminol-O-2 system, we successfully developed a new CL sensor to detect glucose. Under the optimized conditions, glucose could be assayed in the range of 0.05 mM to 5 mM with a detection limit of 0.044 mM. For the detection of clinical serum samples, it is well consistent with the data determined by commercially available method in hospital, indicating that the new CL method provides a possible application for the detection of glucose in clinical diagnostics.