Towards the development of a portable sensor based on a molecularly imprinted membrane for the rapid determination of salbutamol in pig urine

A new type of conductometric probe based on a molecularly imprinted membrane (MIM) for the detection of salbutamol has been designed and fabricated. The probe consists of two parallel screen-printed electrodes (SPE). One of the SPEs was coated with a molecularly imprinted membrane using salbutamol as the template, and the other was modified with a non-molecularly imprinted membrane (N-MIM). Measurements of salbutamol were conducted after the conductometric probe had been connected to a commercial portable conductometer. Multi-sample or successive detections could be easily accomplished by replacing the one-off SPE coated with the salbutamol molecularly imprinted membrane with a new one. The conductometric response of the sensor to the concentration of salbutamol displayed a linear correlation over a range from 50 to 280 nM, with a detection limit of 13.5 nM. The recoveries reached 92.1–98.3% based on pig urine samples. In addition, the sensor based on this new type of probe demonstrated high sensitivity and selectivity for salbutamol.