A novel and sensitive chemiluminescence immunoassay based on AuNCs@pepsin@luminol for simultaneous detection of tetrabromobisphenol A bis(2-hydroxyethyl) ether and tetrabromobisphenol A mono(hydroxyethyl) ether

Abstract A novel chemiluminescence immunoassay based on luminol-modified gold nanoclusters (AuNCs@Peps@luminol) was developed for simultaneous detection of tetrabromobisphenol A bis(2-hydroxyethyl) ether (TBBPA-DHEE) and tetrabromobisphenol A mono(hydroxyethyl) ether (TBBPA-MHEE), an important derivative and byproduct of tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), respectively. In the system, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) was labeled on the second antibody (Ab 2 ) for signal amplification. When ALP-Ab 2 was captured by antigen-primary antibody (Ab 1 ) complex, disodium phenyl phosphate (PPNa) generated massive phenol under the catalysis of ALP, markedly inhibiting the chemiluminescence intensity of AuNCs@Peps@luminol. Under the optimized conditions, the calculated detection of limit (LOD, 90% inhibition) was 0.078 μg/L for TBBPA-DHEE with a linear range of 0.23–9.32 μg/L, which was lower 9 times than that of conventional ELISA with the same antibody. In addition, our method showed satisfactory accuracy and precision (recoveries, 88.00–113.4%; CV, 2.75–8.14%), it can be applied to systematically investigate the concentration of the trace TBBPA-DHEE and TBBPA-MHEE in environmental and food samples.