Flexible graphene oxide/Ag SERS substrate and its applications for ultrasensitive detection of florfenicol residues in milk

• Published in: Research on chemical intermediates 2023-11, Vol.49 (11), p.5083-5099
• Main Authors: Li, Xiaodi, Zhou, Hualan, Wang, Lehui, Wang, Huiwen, Cong, Wenjie, Wang, Mingxuan, Zhang, Jianguo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Catalysis; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Electromagnetic fields; Food safety; Graphene; Inorganic Chemistry; Nanomaterials; Physical Chemistry; Public health; Residues; Rhodamine 6G; Self-assembly; Silver; Substrates
• ISSN: 0922-6168; 1568-5675
• DOI: 10.1007/s11164-023-05122-3

Extensively employed antibiotics in livestock cause residue in food products that would threaten public health safety. In this work, we have developed a flexible, sensitive, cost-effective graphene oxide (GO)/silver–polyester fibrous membrane (PFM) flexible SERS substrate (GO–Ag–PFM) which is suitable for in situ food safety detection. PFMs built nanoporous networks as a flexible template, while GO–Ag nanomaterials were precipitated on the crossed fibers by self-assembly techniques, providing a density “hot-spot” that significantly increased electromagnetic fields. The lowest distinguishable level of rhodamine 6G is 10 −9  mol/L, and the flexible SERS substrates also exhibit good uniformity and reproducibility. The sensitive GO–Ag–PFM flexible SERS substrates achieve low-level SERS detection of florfenicol (FF). The estimated LOD is low to 2.46 × 10 −9  mol/L for FF. The proposed method can be applied to the determination of FF residues in milk. The recoveries were 89–98% with a relative standard deviation of 4.5–9.1%, which is expected to show great potential in food safety testing.