Applications and trends in electrochemiluminescence

Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) is chemiluminescence triggered by electrochemical techniques. More than 150 ECL assays with remarkably high sensitivity and extremely wide dynamic range are currently available, and accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars in sales per year. The recent development of ECL is particularly rapid. After a brief introduction to ECL, this critical review presents the active and/or emerging areas of ECL research as well as new applications and phenomena of ECL, such as light-emitting electrochemical cell, wireless electrochemical microarray using ECL as photonic reporter, high throughput analysis, aptasensors, immunoassays and DNA analysis, ECL of nanoclusters and carbon nanomaterials, ECL imaging techniques, scanning ECL microscopy, colorimetric ECL sensor, surface plasmon-coupled ECL, electrostatic chemiluminescence, soliton-like ECL waves, ECL investigation of molecular interaction, and single molecule detection. Finally, some perspectives on this rapidly developing field are discussed (322 references). This critical review highlights the active and/or emerging research areas of ECL as well as its new applications and phenomena.