Rapid Detection of Flusilazole in Pears with Au@Ag Nanoparticles for Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering

Abstract

Residual pesticides in vegetables or fruits have been become one of the world’s most concerned food safety issues. Au-Ag core-shell nanoparticles (Au@Ag NPs) coupled with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) was used for analysis of flusilazole which was widely applied in pears. Three different diameters of Au@Ag NPs were prepared to select the best SERS substrate for analyzing flusilazole. The Au@Ag NPs sizes of 90 ± 7 nm showed the highest enhancement effect and could be detected flusilazole standard solution and the minimum detectable concentration was 0.1 mg/L. Flusilazole in pear could also identified at as low as 0.1 μg/g. The amount of adsorbent is critical in the sample preparation process and the best amount of each absorber dosage was 0.6 g MgSO4, 0.2 g C18 and 0.2 g primary secondary amine (PSA). The experimental results indicated a good linear relationship between the Raman intensities of chief peaks and the concentrations of flusilazole solutions (R2 = 0.924–0.962). This study shows that Au@Ag as SERS substrate has great potential to analyze of flusilazole in food matrices.

Large-Scale Fabrication of Ultrasensitive and Uniform Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Substrates for the Trace Detection of Pesticides

“…After several decades of development since it was discovered on electrochemically roughened silver in 1973 [ 1 , 2 ], surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has become a powerful analytical tool for applications of chemical and biological molecule detection, environmental monitoring, and food safety [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. SERS is able to identify molecules through vibrational fingerprint signals and can even detect single molecules [ 9 , 10 ].…”

Trace analysis of organic compounds in foods with surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy: Methodology, progress, and challenges

“…SERS has been applied to analyze trace chemicals in various foods, mainly hazardous compounds that may pose health risks. These typically include residual pesticides, herbicides, or insecticides in plant source foods (Fan et al., , ; Kang, Wu, Chen, Li, & Du, ; Liou, Nayigiziki, Kong, Mustapha, & Lin, ; Sun, Yu, & Lin, ; Zhao, Huang, Fan, & Lai, ), banned and restricted drugs (such as growth hormones and antibiotics) in muscle foods such as fish and chicken (Li et al., ; Xu et al., ), naturally occurred toxicants such as aflatoxins in grains (Lee, Herrman, Bisrat, & Murray, ) and histamine in fish (Janči et al., ), as well as prohibited or restricted additives such as melamine in processed foods (Lin et al., ; Zhao et al., ), formaldehyde in shrimp and squid (Zhang, Zhao, Ma, & Li, ), Sudan dyes in chili flakes (Ou et al., ), Sunset Yellow and Allura Red in beverages (Ou et al., ), and tert‐butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) in vegetable oils (Pan et al., ).…”

“…The application of SERS for quantifying trace compounds is generally unsatisfactory to date due to the difficulties of obtaining reproducible SERS spectra, although there are some reported studies indicating the potential of employing SERS for quantitative analysis. A simple way for quantitative analysis with SERS was based upon a linear relationship between analyte concentrations within a specific range and their corresponding SERS characteristic peak intensities (Fan et al., ; Luo et al., ; Zhao et al., ). However, since SERS effect is essentially a monolayer effect, if the analyte concentration is too high leading to the saturation of the monolayer, then the linearity between analyte concentration and instrumental response no longer applies (Bell & Sirimuthua, ; McNay et al., ).…”

Ag Nanoparticles Decorated ZnO Nanorods as Multifunctional SERS Substrates for Ultrasensitive Detection and Catalytic Degradation of Rhodamine B

“…Compared with traditional liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) [ 7 ] and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) [ 8 ], surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a promising ultra-trace detection technology with numerous advantages, such as being a fast and straightforward method, having high sensitivity, and is non-destructive. These properties make it widely used in various fields such as analytical chemistry, life science, and food safety, and it has good prospects for the rapid detection of organic pollutants [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ].…”