An electrochemiluminescent sensor based on ZnPTC@MoS₂ nanocomposite for sensitive determination of trilobatin

In this work, a sensitive electrochemiluminescence (ECL) sensing platform was developed for the determination of trilobatin (Tri) using a ZnPTC@MoS₂-modified glassy carbon electrode. In this sensing interface, ZnPTC acts as both an intrinsically ECL-active metal-organic framework and a structural scaffold, while MoS₂ nanosheets promote interfacial electron transfer and facilitate the electroreduction of persulfate. The synergistic integration of ZnPTC and MoS₂ effectively alleviates the restacking of MoS₂ nanosheets, improves charge-transfer kinetics, and significantly enhances the ECL response of the composite. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the change in ECL intensity showed a good linear relationship with the logarithm of Tri concentration over the range of 5.0 × 10^-8-1.0 × 10^-3 M, with a detection limit of 5.6 × 10^-9 M. The proposed ECL sensor exhibited good selectivity, reproducibility, operational stability, and long-term stability. Moreover, the method was successfully applied to the determination of Tri in real samples, affording recoveries of 98.98-103.66% with relative standard deviations below 2.50%. These results demonstrate that the ZnPTC@MoS₂-based ECL platform provides a promising analytical strategy for sensitive Tri determination in practical samples.