Superquenching acridinium ester chemiluminescence by gold nanoparticles for DNA detection

It was found that the chemiluminescence of acridinium ester (AE) was quenched effectively by gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with Stern–Volmer constants approaching 1010 M−1, which was exploited to realize sequence-specific DNA detection based on the preferential absorption of AE-tagged single-strand probe on unmodified AuNPs over the hybrids of probe and target DNA.