Fabrication of silver-coated gold nanoparticles to simultaneously detect multi-class insecticide residues in peach with SERS technique

Fast sampling and multicomponent detections are important in the analysis of pesticide residues detection. In this work, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) method based on silver-coated gold nanoparticles (Au@Ag NPs) was used to simultaneously detect multi-class pesticide residues such as thiacloprid (carbamate), profenofos (organophosphate) and oxamyl (neonicotinoid) in standard solution and peach fruit. The Au@Ag NPs with 26 nm Au core size and 6 nm Ag shell thickness exhibited significant Raman enhancement, especially by the creation of hot spots through NPs aggregation induced by the connection between Au@Ag NPs and target molecules. The findings demonstrated that the characteristic wavenumber of the pesticides (thiacloprid, profenofos, and oxamyl) could be precisely identified using the SERS method. Compared with earlier studies, the current approach was rapid, inexpensive and without lengthy sample pretreatment. Moreover, the results revealed that the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.1 mg/kg for thiacloprid obtained in the peach extract with determination coefficient (R-2) of 0.986. Additionally, LOD for both profenofos and oxamyl was 0.01 mg/kg with a determination coefficient (R-2) of 0.985 and 0.988, respectively. Good recovery percentage (78.6-162.0%) showed the high SERS activity with better accuracy for the detection of the thiacloprid, profenofos, and oxamyl in peach. The results of this study could offer a promising SERS platform for simultaneous detection of other contaminants such as thiacloprid, profenofos and oxamyl in multifaceted food matrices.