Highly Stable Covalent Organic Framework Nanosheets as a New Generation of Electrochemiluminescence Emitters for Ultrasensitive MicroRNA Detection.

A pyrene-based sp carbon-conjugated covalent organic framework (COF) nanosheet (Py-spc-CON) with strong and stable electrochemiluminescence (ECL) emission was constructed by C═C polycondensation of tetrakis(4-formylphenyl)pyrene (TFPPy) and 2,2'-(1,4-phenylene)diacetonitrile, which was employed as a highly efficient ECL emitter to fabricate an ECL biosensor for the first time. The Py-spc-CON exhibited higher ECL intensity and efficiency than those of TFPPy, bulk Py-spc-COF, and imine-linked pyrene COF, not only because the pyrene luminophores and aggregation-induced emissive luminogens (cyano-substituted phenylenevinylene) were topologically linked into Py-spc-CON, which greatly increased the immobilization amount of luminophores and decreased the aggregation-caused quenching effect and nonradiative transition but also because the porous ultrathin structure of Py-spc-CON effectively shortened transport distances of an electron, ion, and co-reactant (SO), which made more ECL luminophores be activated and thus efficiently increased the utilization ratio of luminophores. More interestingly, when BuNPF was introduced into the Py-spc-CON/SO system as a co-reaction accelerator, the ECL signal of Py-spc-CON was further amplified. As expected, the average ECL intensity of the Py-spc-CON/SO/BuNPF system was about 2.03, 5.76, 24.31, and 190.33-fold higher than those of Py-spc-CON/SO, Py-spc-COF/SO, TFPPy/SO, and imine-linked pyrene COF/SO systems. Considering these advantages, the Py-spc-CON/SO/BuNPF system was employed to prepare an ECL biosensor for microRNA-21 detection, which exhibited a broad linear response (100 aM to 1 nM) and a low detection limit (46 aM). Overall, this work demonstrated that sp carbon CONs can be directly used as a high-performance ECL emitter, thus expanding the application scope of COFs and opening a new horizon to develop new types of ECL emitters.