Chemiluminescence | Overview *

The article provides an introduction to and summary of the principles of solid, liquid, and gas-phase chemiluminescence reactions; the latter two being most utilized. From the perspective of analytical chemistry and detection, the relationship between reaction kinetics and flow cell geometry to observed signal intensity is discussed. Likewise, the significance of sensitivity, selectivity, and corrected spectra are concisely examined. The chemistry of several well-known examples of both gas and liquid-phase chemiluminescence reactions are listed together with summaries of conditions, emission wavelengths, emitters and typical analytes. The overview leads the reader logically to the more detailed article on chemiluminescence.