Electrolytic exfoliation synthesis of boron doped graphene quantum dots: a new luminescent material for electrochemiluminescence detection of oncogene microRNA 20a
In this work, boron doped graphene quantum dots (BGQDs) with the atomic percentage of boron (B) of 0.67 2.26% were synthesized by electrolytic exfoliation of B doped graphene rods. X ray photoelectron spectroscopy of BGQDs confirmed that the B atoms have been successfully incorporated into the GQDs. Characterizations by transmission electron microscopy, photoluminescence (PL) spectra and UV visible spectra demonstrated that BGQDs had a consistent lattice spacing with the plane of graphene and possessed good luminous performance. The PL stability, the electrochemical impedance and Zeta potential test indicated that the 60 days PL stability of BGQDs was improved by 51% and the resistance of BGQDs was decreased by 11% compared with that of the pure GQDs when 1.29% (atomic percentage) of B was doped. Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) sensing results showed that the ECL sensor with BGQDs as luminescent material exhibited an excellent analytical property for the detection of miRNA 20a in a linear range of 0.1 1x104 pM with a quantification limit of 0.1 pM. Specificity tests showed that this ECL sensor could distinguish the target miRNAs 20a with several similar bases strand. The obtained results in this study prove that the proposed ECL sensor provides a high sensitively, specifically and simply platform for detection of miRNAs 20a.