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Cotton swabs wrapped with three-dimensional silver nanoflowers as SERS substrates for the determination of food colorant carmine on irregular surfaces

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Abstract

A lightweight, portable, low-cost, and accessible cotton swab was employed as surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) matrix template. The silver nanoflowers were in situ grown on the surface of cotton swabs to form three-dimensional Ag nanoflower@cotton swabs (AgNF@CS) SERS substrate with high-density and multi-level hot spots. The SERS performance of AgNFs@CS substrates with various reaction time was systematically studied. The optimal AgNF-120@CS SERS substrate exhibits superior detection sensitivity of 10−10 M for methylene blue, good signal reproducibility, high enhancement factor of 1.4 × 107, and excellent storage stability (over 30 days). Moreover, the AgNF-120@CS SERS substrate also exhibits prominent detection sensitivity of 10−8 M for food colorant of carmine. Besides, the portable AgNF-120@CS SERS substrate is also capable of detecting food colorant residues on irregular food surfaces.

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Funding

Prof. Shouxiang Jiang: Hong Kong Innovation Technology Funding (No. PRP/104/20TI). Prof. Sihang Zhang: Start-up Fund for High-level Talents of Hainan University (KYQD(ZR)23098), Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (224MS003), Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC) of the Hong Kong SAR Government for “Research Talent Hub” Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme (RTH-ITF, No. PiH/253/21). Prof. Long Wu: Key Laboratory of Tropical Fruit and Vegetable Quality and Safety for State Market Supervision (ZX-2023001).

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Author notes

  1. Sihang Zhang and Kejun Jin contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Food Nutrition and Functional Food of Hainan Province, School of Food Science and Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, Hainan, China

    Sihang Zhang, Jiechen Xu, Long Wu & Xing Liu

  2. School of Fashion and Textiles, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, 999077, Hong Kong, China

    Sihang Zhang, Kejun Jin, Jiangtao Xu & Shouxiang Jiang

  3. Key Laboratory of Tropical Fruits and Vegetables Quality and Safety for State Market Regulation, Hainan Institute for Food Control, Haikou, 570314, China

    Sihang Zhang, Jiechen Xu, Long Wu & Xing Liu

  4. Shandong Key Laboratory of Chemical Energy Storage and New Battery Technology, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Liaocheng University, No. 1, Hunan Road, Liaocheng, 252000, China

    Lei Ding

  5. State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Zoufei Du

Authors
  1. Sihang Zhang
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  2. Kejun Jin
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Contributions

SZ: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization. KJ: methodology, investigation. JX and JX: visualization, investigation. LD: methodology, investigation. LW: conceptualization, supervision and funding acquisition. XL: conceptualization, supervision and funding acquisition. ZD: writing—review and editing, supervision. SJ: writing—review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Sihang Zhang, Zoufei Du or Shouxiang Jiang.

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Zhang, S., Jin, K., Xu, J. et al. Cotton swabs wrapped with three-dimensional silver nanoflowers as SERS substrates for the determination of food colorant carmine on irregular surfaces. Microchim Acta 191, 222 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-024-06292-6

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