Visualization analysis of lecithin in drugs based on electrochemiluminescent single gold microbeads

Fast and high-throughput determination of drugs is a key trend in clinical medicine. Single particles have increasingly been adopted in a variety of photoanalytical and electroanalytical applications, and microscopic analysis has been a hot topic in recent years, especially for electrochemiluminescence (ECL). This paper describes a simple ECL method based on single gold microbeads to image lecithin. Lecithin reacts to produce hydrogen peroxide under the successive enzymatic reaction of phospholipase D and choline oxidase. ECL was generated by the electrochemical reaction between a luminol analog and hydrogen peroxide, and ECL signals were imaged by a camera. Despite the heterogeneity of single gold microbeads, their luminescence obeyed statistical regularity. The average luminescence of 30 gold microbeads is correlated with the lecithin concentration, and thus, a visualization method for analyzing lecithin was established. Calibration curves were constructed for ECL intensity and lecithin concentration, achieving detection limits of 0.05 mM lecithin. This ECL imaging platform based on single gold microbeads exhibits outstanding advantages, such as high throughput, versatility and low cost, and holds great potential in disease diagnostics, environmental monitoring and food safety.