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.
