Electrochemical stripping chemiluminescent sensor based on copper nanoclusters for detection of carcinoembryonic antigen

•An ESCL aptamer sensor was constructed based on dsDNA templated Cu NCs.•The obtained Cu NCs could distinctly enhance the ECL signal of luminol.•The developed ESCL immunosensor exhibited a low detection limitation and a wide linear range. As a new type of nano-catalytic material, copper nanoclusters (Cu NCs) have received more and more attention in various fields such as biosensors and catalysis. In this work, an electrochemical stripping chemiluminescent (ESCL) aptamer sensor based on Cu NCs was constructed for the detection of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The Cu NCs were generated using DNA duplex (the CEA aptamer and its complementary strand) as template. During the ESCL detection process, Cu NCs catalyzed the reduction of H2O2 and were gradually electrochemically oxidized to Cu2+, which both promoted the decomposition of H2O2 and thus greatly improved the ECL of luminol. CEA could specifically bind with its aptamer, so the DNA duplex was damaged, causing a decrease of Cu NCs and lower ECL signals. Under the optimized conditions, the sensor achieved a high sensitivity detection of CEA with a linear range of 0.2 fg mL−1 to 1 ng mL−1 and a detection limit of 66.67 ag mL−1 (S/N = 3). In addition, the sensor exhibited good specificity, stability and reproducibility, and the detection of actual samples obtained satisfactory results, indicating that the provided strategy has potential application prospects in clinical detection.