Development of surface plasmon resonance sensors based on molecularly imprinted nanofilms for sensitive and selective detection of pesticides

Pesticides have been utilized in agriculture for decades. However, their widespread use has increased multiple concerns due to their known and suspected toxicities on long-term human health risks in scientific and industrial communities. Thus, detecting pesticides will have a great impact on their management, as well as improve their toxicity effects over humans. Here, we fabricate molecularly imprinted nanofilms and integrate them with surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors for sensitive, selective, fast and real-time detection of multiple pesticides, including cyanazine (SNZ), simazine (SMZ) and atrazine (ATZ). The molecularly imprinted nanofilms onto the SPR gold surfaces are prepared via UV polymerization reactions, which consist of N-methacryloyl-l-phenylalanine methyl ester (MAPA) as a functional monomer, 1-vinylimidazole (VIM) as a co-monomer, and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as a cross-linker. The real-time measurements on SPR sensor provide a detection range from 0.10 to 6.64 nM, as well as denote a limit of detection (LOD) values of 0.095, 0.031 and 0.091 nM for SNZ, SMZ and ATZ, respectively. Furthermore, we perform selectivity test, where SNZ, SMZ and ATZ are examined as competitor agents. Overall, the pesticide imprinted SPR sensors have been found to be highly selective and sensitive. These SPR sensors also hold great potential to be used an alternative method for the existing pesticide monitoring approaches due to their reusability, fast response, and easy-to-use properties, as well as can be tailored to detect and real-time monitor of other pesticides.