Controllable In-Situ Growth of Silver Nanoparticles on Filter Paper for Flexible and Highly Sensitive SERS Sensors for Malachite Green Residue Detection

• Main Authors: Lingzi Zhang, Jun Liu, Guowei Zhou, Zhiliang Zhang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-04-01
• Series: Nanomaterials
• Subjects: surface-enhanced Raman scattering; silver nanoparticles; polydopamine; filter paper; malachite green
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-4991/10/5/826

In this work, a series of highly flexible and sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates were fabricated by the in-situ growth of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) on polydopamine (PDA) templated filter papers (FPs), based on mussel-inspired surface chemistry. The obtained FP@PDA@AgNPs strips exhibited high sensitivity and reproducibility with Rhodamine 6G (R6G) probe molecules, with a calculated detection limit of approximately 10⁻¹⁰ M. More critically, these FP@PDA@AgNPs strips could be used as outstanding flexible SERS sensors to quickly collect and detect malachite green (MG) residues on fish scales, crab shells and shrimp skins by a swabbing extraction method. The detection limits for MG residues were calculated to be approximately as low as 0.04635 pg/cm², 0.06952 pg/cm² and 0.09270 pg/cm², respectively. This facile and efficient strategy could to be utilized as a universal approach to fabricating a variety of flexible, cheap and portable SERS sensors for surface contamination analysis, and has great potential in the environmental scientific analysis and food safety monitoring fields.