Double remote electrochemical addressing and optical readout of electrochemiluminescence at the tip of an optical fiber

Abstract

In this work, we report an original strategy for the wireless electrochemical generation of light at the tip of an optical fiber bundle, coupled with a simultaneous remote readout. An optical fiber bundle coated with a nanometer-thin gold film acts as a dual platform, on the one hand to locally generate electrochemiluminescence (ECL) in a wireless manner by bipolar electrochemistry, and on the other hand to guide the resulting ECL signal. The light emission is triggered and collected at one end, transmitted by the waveguide and remotely detected at the opposite end. Integration of both functionalities at the level of the same miniaturized object leads to an unprecedented bipolar opto-electrode, allowing one to quantify the ECL intensity as a function of different parameters in a double remote approach with interesting potential applications, ranging from high-throughput catalyst screening to massive parallel biochemical analysis.