Controllable assembly of three-dimensional SERS substrate for highly sensitive detection of thiram residues in vegetables

Tangchun Wang; Binbin Sun; Weijie Wang; Zhengping Li; Jianbo Qu; Zhiliang Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.142568

Controllable assembly of three-dimensional SERS substrate for highly sensitive detection of thiram residues in vegetables

Food Chem. 2024 Dec 18:469:142568. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.142568. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Tangchun Wang¹, Binbin Sun², Weijie Wang³, Zhengping Li¹, Jianbo Qu¹, Zhiliang Zhang⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Biobased Material and Green Papermaking, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250353, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Biobased Material and Green Papermaking, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250353, China; Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals in Universities of Shandong, School of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Engineering, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250353, China.
³ Technology Research and Development Center, Huada Chemical Group, Yantai 264001, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Biobased Material and Green Papermaking, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250353, China. Electronic address: zhzhl@iccas.ac.cn.

PMID: 39724696
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.142568

Abstract

In this work, a series of three-dimensional (3D) SERS substrate were successfully fabricated by assembling silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) onto a porous gelatin sponge (GS) for highly sensitive thiram residues detection in vegetables. These 3D micro-nanostructures could induce the sufficient surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect of noble metals on their surface and achieve high enrichment of pollutant molecules. As crystal violet (CV) was used as a probe molecule, the lowest CV solution could be detected at 10^-9 M, and the enhancement factor (EF) was calculated to be 9.53 × 10⁶. These Raman enhancement effect was completely in accordance with the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) simulations calculation. More critically, these 3D SERS substrates showed high sensitivity in the actual detection of thiram residue in vegetables, and a detection limit of 0.062 mg/kg was successfully obtained. This construction strategy is expected to provide a fast and simple method for the detection of harmful pollutants in the agriculture and aquaculture fields.

Keywords: 3D SERS; FDTD simulations; Gelatin sponge; Surface plasmon resonance; Thiram residue.