Mobile phone-based electrochemiluminescence sensing exploiting the ‘USB On-The-Go’ protocol

A low-cost system to generate, control and detect electrochemiluminescence using a mobile smartphone is described. A simple tone-detection integrated circuit is used to switch power sourced from the phone's Universal Serial Bus (USB) ‘On-The-Go’ (OTG) port, using audible tone pulses played over the device's audio jack. We have successfully applied this approach to smartphones from different manufacturers and with different operating system versions. ECL calibrations of a common luminophore, tris(2,2′-bipyridine)ruthenium(II) ([Ru(bpy)3]2+), with 2-(dibutylamino)ethanol (DBAE) as a co-reactant, showed no significant difference in light intensities when an electrochemical cell was controlled by a mobile phone in this manner, compared to the same calibration generated using a conventional potentiostat. Combining this novel approach to control the applied potential with the measurement of the emitted light through the smart phone camera (using an in-house built Android app), we explored the ECL properties of a water-soluble iridium(III) complex that emits in the blue region of the spectrum. The iridium(III) complex exhibited superior co-reactant ECL intensities and limits of detection to that of the conventional [Ru(bpy)3]2+ luminophore.