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Abstract The electrochemiluminescence (ECL) of ruthenium(II) tris(2,2′‐bipyridyl) (Ru(bpy) 3 2+ ) with tri‐ n ‐propylamine (TPrA) as the good coreactant can be unexpectedly enhanced by a weak coreactant, such as triethanolamine (TEOA). First, the intensity of ECL emitted by Ru(bpy) 3 2+ /TPrA can be remarkably amplified by 10.8‐fold after adding some amount of TEOA. Moreover, the ECL layer thickness, measured by self‐interference spectroscopy, is also doubled. The enhancement far exceeding the superposition of respective contribution of TPrA and TEOA was elucidated by a “chemical oxidation mechanism”, in which TEOA + ⋅ acts as a chemical enhancer to oxidize TPrA in solution and to accelerate significantly the ECL reaction kinetics. This mechanism was proved by single‐photon counting experiment and finite element simulations. In addition, the dual‐coreactants strategy works well not only in solution with freely diffusive Ru(bpy) 3 2+ , but also on Ru(bpy) 3 2+ ‐functionalized microbeads, suggesting that ethanolamines could act as cheap, easily available and low‐background enhancers for ECL‐based bioanalysis and microscopy.
Ding et al. (Tue,) studied this question.