Development of lucigenin-N-hydroxyphthalimide chemiluminescence system and its application to sensitive detection of Co.

N-hydroxyphthalimide (NHPI) is an efficient organic catalyst and an important chemical raw material which can be used as an intermediate in organic synthesis of drugs and pesticides. In this study, NHPI has been used as a coreactant of lucigenin chemiluminescence (CL) for the first time. The CL of the developed system is significantly enhanced in the presence of Co. Therefore, we developed a novel lucigenin-NHPI CL method coupled with flow injection analysis for the sensitive, precise, and selective determination of Co. The linear range of this method is 1-1000 nM, and the detection limit is 67 pM (S/N = 3). In addition, this method has a good selectivity for Co. It has been applied to the detection of Co in lake water, and the standard recovery rate is 95.9-103.2%, indicating that the method is feasible.