Exploring the behavior of gold nanostar@reduced graphene oxide composite in chemiluminescence: Application to highly sensitive detection of glutathione.

Gold nanostar@reduced graphene oxide (GNS@rGO) nanocomposite was used as a catalyst in a chemiluminescence (CL) reaction. Composites with different sizes of gold nanostars were prepared without any surfactant, and characterized by transmission electron microscopy, UV–visible, FT-IR and Raman spectroscopy. We showed that GNS@rGO can strongly enhance the intensity of luminol‑sodium periodate CL system and the larger the GNS size, the greater the enhancing effect. This effect results from the unique catalytic action of GNS@rGO, which leads to the acceleration of reactive oxygen species generation. We also found that a remarkable increase in the CL intensity of GNS@rGO-luminol-NaIO4 system occurs in the presence of glutathione (GSH). Based on this observation, a simple and highly sensitive CL probe was developed for detection of GSH. Under the optimum conditions, the calibration curve exhibits a linear range from 1.0 nM to 1.0 μM for GSH with a detection limit of 0.2 nM. The developed method was applied to the detection of GSH in human plasma samples.