Electrogenerated Chemiluminescence Behavior of Graphite-like Carbon Nitride and Its Application in Selective Sensing Cu2+

This paper reports for the first time the electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) behavior of graphite-like carbon nitride (g-C3N4) with K2S2O8 as the coreactant. The possible ECL reaction mechanisms are proposed. The spectral features of the ECL emission and photoluminescence (PL) of g-C3N4 are compared, and their resemblance demonstrates that the excited states of g-C3N4 from both ECL and photoexcitation are the same. The effects of K2S2O8 concentration, pH, g-C3N4/carbon powder ratio, and scan rate on the ECL intensity have been studied in detail. Furthermore, it is observed that the ECL intensity is efficiently quenched by trace amounts of Cu2+center dot g-C3N4 is thus employed to fabricate an ECL sensor which shows high selectivity to Cu2+ determination. The limit of detection is determined as 0.9 nM. It is anticipated that g-C3N4 could be a new class of promising material for fabricating ECL sensors.