Ionic liquid functionalized gold nanoparticles: Synthesis, rapid colorimetric detection of imidacloprid

A versatile yet simple strategy for the imidacloprid of a highly selective and sensitive imidacloprid probe based on ionic liquids (I-IL) modified gold nanoparticles (I-IL-Au NPs) was developed. The detection system presents excellent selectivity ability (0.5 μM) when with a series of interfering pesticides and can be applied to the determination of imidacloprid in real water samples such as the Yangtze River sample and East Lake water samples with the limit of colorimetric detection as low as 1.0 × 10−6 M and 5.0 × 10−5 M. In addition, our detection system can realize relatively effective removal of imidacloprid, and the proposed method was highly accurate, precise and reproducible.