Single-Atom Cobalt Sites Efficient Activation of H2O2 With Enhanced O2 Tolerance for Electrochemiluminescence Sensing of Plasticizers.

Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) based on luminol-H₂O₂ systems presents significant potential for the accurate and reliable biosensing. However, owing to the overlap of the potential windows for activating H₂O₂ and dissolved O₂ leads to competitive reactions, which presents a significant challenge for the selective ECL sensing. Herein, single atom Co sites on nitrogen-doped hierarchically porous carbon (Co-NC SAs) as co-reaction accelerators can efficiently activate H₂O₂ to generate reactive oxygen species for oxidation of luminol and thus achievement of enhanced ECL emission. Meanwhile, Co-NC SAs exhibits a greater tolerance to dissolved O₂ compared to other SAs, thereby enhancing the selectivity for the activation of H₂O₂. Besides, based on the inhibition effect of plasticizers toward proposed ECL platform, a three-channel sensor array is constructed to distinguish and simultaneously detect five plasticizers with high sensitivity. More importantly, this work provides new insights into the design of highly active and selective co-reaction accelerators, also rendering a promising technique for environmental monitoring against trace plasticizers.