Potassium ferricyanide oxidizes silicon quantum dots under alkaline conditions to produce chemiluminescence for uric acid detection in human urine.

Potassium ferricyanide (K 3 (Fe(CN) 6 )) could directly oxidize silicon quantum dots (Si QDs) to generate chemiluminescence (CL) under alkaline conditions. It was noteworthy that in the Si QDs-K 3 (Fe(CN) 6 )-NaOH CL system, the Si QDs worked as a new luminescent material. In addition, the signal intensity of this CL system could be weakened with the addition of uric acid (UA). Based on these, we exploited a new easy and convenient determination method of UA. This method only needed filtration and dilution of UA, without other pretreatment. The constructed system exhibited a linear relationship that ranged from 0.50 to 4.50 mmol·L -1 , with 0.24 mmol·L -1 of detection limit, and this system had successfully demonstrated the detection of UA in human urine. In addition, this work also broaden the application of the Si QDs in CL research.