Combination of a graphene SERS substrate and magnetic solid phase micro-extraction used for the rapid detection of trace illegal additives

Abstract

Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is an ultra-sensitive spectroscopy technique, which can provide rich structural information for a great number of molecules, while solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) is an efficient method for sample pretreatment in analytical chemistry, particularly in a micro-system. In the present report, a silver-loaded and graphene-based magnetic composite (Fe₃O₄@GO@Ag) was fabricated for use as both a SERS-active substrate and SPME material. The π–π stacking and fluorescence quenching abilities of GO make the composite a perfect candidate for SERS in analyzing real-world samples. Therefore, through combining the magnetic nanoparticles with a SPME device, we have developed a pretreatment method named as disperse magnetic solid phase micro-extraction (Dis-MSPME). In comparison to traditional SPME, the proposed Dis-MSPME realized solid phase micro-extraction from a dispersive system and largely improved the extraction efficiency. Furthermore, by combining the advantages of both Dis-MSPME and SERS we have proposed a new detection method called Dis-MSPME-SERS. Finally, as an example, the illegal additive chloramphenicol (CAP) was successfully detected in aqueous solution with low LOQ and LOD values (1.0 × 10⁻⁸ and 1.0 × 10⁻¹⁰ M, respectively), which was finalized within 10 min based on the proposed Dis-MSPME-SERS method. Therefore, a simpler, more efficient and sensitive approach to realize enrichment, magnetic separation and detection, all-in-one, for the detection of illegal additives has been reported, which will be promising towards the detection of trace amounts of substance in micro-systems.