Ru(bpy)3(2+)/nanoporous silver-based electrochemiluminescence immunosensor for alpha fetoprotein enhanced by gold nanoparticles decorated black carbon intercalated reduced graphene oxide.

A highly sensitive sandwich-type electrochemiluminescence (ECL) immunosensor was proposed for the quantitative determination of alpha fetoprotein (AFP) using gold nanoparticles decorated black carbon intercalated reduced graphene oxide (Au-rGO@CB) as sensing platform and nanoporous silver (NPS) loaded Ru(bpy)3(2+) as labels. In this work, intercalation of CB inhibited the accumulation of rGO and Au-rGO@CB was firstly used to immobilize primary antibody (Ab1) in ECL system. NPS prepared by the dealloying of binary alloy has high pore volume and surface areas, which was used to load amount of secondary antibodies (Ab2) and Ru(bpy)3(2+), which could greatly enhance the ECL intensity. Under optimal conditions, the designed immunosensor exhibited wider linear range from 0.0001 to 30 ng/mL with a relative lower detection limit of 33 fg/mL for AFP detection. Overall, the designed immunosensor exhibited high sensitivity and selectivity, good repeatability and stability. This proposed method provided a potential application for clinical monitoring of AFP.