Identification of medicinal herbs in Asteraceae and Polygonaceae using an electrochemical fingerprint recorded using screen-printed electrode

A quick and low-cost method for traditional medical herbs identification is essential for the plant resources and pharmaceutical industries. The electrochemical voltammetric profile of plant tissues can be considered as a unique fingerprint available for herbal traditional medical herbs identification. In this work, a chip-based portable method is proposed for measuring the electrochemical fingerprint of a series of medicinal herbs with the assistance of graphene. Fingerprints were converted into patterns, colors and pixels for easy identification. The results indicated that the proposed electrochemical fingerprint sensor can recognize medicinal herbs in fresh, dried and prepared forms. In addition, the taxonomic relationships of these species were studied based on the recorded fingerprints, since the degree of differences in electroactive compounds can reflect genetic differences. The results indicate that the electrochemical fingerprints recorded from fresh samples can effectively reflect the phylogenetic position of species.

Automated summary

A portable method utilizing graphene to measure the electrochemical fingerprint of medicinal herbs was proposed in this study, enabling easy identification of herbs in different forms. The results showed that electrochemical fingerprints can effectively differentiate medicinal herbs and have potential application value in taxonomic studies of species.