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Updated: Sep 28, 2025

A Novel Technique for Generating and Observing Chemiluminescence in a Biological Setting
Published on: March 9, 2017
Terbium (III)-based Metallacrowns with aggregation-induced emission feature coupled with cu (II) for fluorescence
Fei Qu1, Yue Wang1, Dafeng Jiang2
1The Key Laboratory of Life-Organic Analysis, Qufu Normal University, Qufu 273165, Shandong, China; The Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Intermediates and Analysis of Natural Medicine, Qufu Normal University, Qufu 273165, Shandong, China.
Abstract:
The Metallacrowns (MCs) composed of repeated [Metal-N-O] subunits are a type of new material, but the MCs have not been developed and utilized in analytical applications. This essay reports on a new kind of terbium(III)-based Metallacrowns (Tb-MCs) with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) feature to build a sensing platform. It is first time that Tb-MCs are able to aggregate to larger aggregates in water along with a bright green emission, so that the property makes it possible to apply in biosensing. Thereafter, the AIE of Tb-MCs can be quenched effectively by Cu2+. Based on the high affinity of thiol to Cu2+, cysteine (Cys) recovers the fluorescence of Tb-MCs in the presence of Cu2+. There is a good linear range varying from 0.02 to 20 μM with a low limit of detection (LOD) 9.67 nM of Cys. In the end, this novel probe is also successfully applied to the determination of Cys in human serum with satisfactory results.
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