Molecularly Imprinted Polymers Near Field Communication sensors for pesticide detection

For a healthy and convenient daily lifestyle, co-development of pesticide residue detectors to integrate molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) modified electrodes and industrial innovative Near Field Communication (NFC) sensor for smartphones interface devices has been established. It targets cypermethrin and carbaryl which are usually detected in fruits and vegetables. Pesticide-MIPs were fabricated on commercial screen-printed electrodes (SPEs) by bulk polymeri-zation of methyl methacrylate (MMA) monomer, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) cross-linker, azobis(2-methyl-propionitrile (AIBN) initiator with cypermethrin and carbaryl templates in cypermethrin-MIPs/SPE and carbaryl-MIPs/SPE, respectively. The surface morphology of modified electrodes was characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM), which present cavities of a template on the surface of MIPs/SPE. The experiments of NFC pesticide residue detectors were conducted in real vegetable samples, where a selectivity of 32.18 μA/ppb and a detection limit of 5.4 ppb for cypermethrin-MIPs/SPE and a selectivity of 22.15 μA/ppb and a limit of detection of 9.3 ppb for carbaryl-MIPs/SPE have been obtained. The electrodes can be used four times and have more than six months storage duration.