Silver nanoparticle-decorated TiO2 nanotube array for solid-phase microextraction and SERS detection of antibiotic residue in milk

The excessive use or abuse of antibiotics on dairy cows leads to residues in milk, which can represent a public health risk. However, in recent years the beta-Lactamase was illegally used to degrade residual antibiotics in milk, which makes the traditional antibiotic detection methods ineffective. Therefore, there is an extremely urgent need for multi-analyte analysis techniques for the detection of antibiotic residues. Herein, we reported an ultra-fast, facile, and sensitive solid-phase microextraction (SPME)-surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) platform for the detection of degraded antibiotics-2-mercapto- 5-m ethyl-1,3,4-thiadiazole (MMT). The results showed that the log-log plot of SERS intensity to MMT concentration exhibits a superior linear relationship (R-2 = 0.992) in the concentration range of 0.5-1000 mu M, with a detection limit of 0.11 mu M. The silver nanoparticle-decorated TiO2 nanotube array was successfully used as an all-in-one SPME-SERS substrate in the extraction and identification of the antibiotic degradation products in real milk. Due to the rapid pre-treatment, good reproducibility, and self-cleaning, the proposed SPME-SERS method has a great promise to be applied as a powerful tool for on-site detection in the field of food safety. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The excessive use or abuse of antibiotics in dairy cows can lead to residues in milk, posing a potential risk to public health. In response to the ineffectiveness of traditional antibiotic detection methods, there is an urgent need for the development of multi-analyte analysis techniques for detecting antibiotic residues.