Recently, food safety
has received considerable attention, and
various analytical techniques have been employed to monitor food quality.
One of the promising techniques in this domain is the surface-enhanced
Raman scattering (SERS) technique. This study developed a facile,
cost-effective SERS method by supporting a wipe-type substrate with
a small-head cotton swab. We fabricated Au-nanoparticle (NP)-decorated
cotton swabs (CS-Au NP) via the dropwise addition of gold colloid
on the cotton fibers. These swabs exhibit reduced gold colloid consumption
and a compact fiber structure, allowing for the uniform distribution
of Au NPs and easy capture of molecular signals. Experiments were
conducted to obtain a CS-Au NP wiper performance optimized for cotton
swab selection, NaCl concentration, and Au NP layers. The Raman reporter
molecule 4-mercaptopyridine was detected at a concentration of 1 ×
10–8 M and a relative standard deviation of ≤10%.
The proposed SERS platform enables the facile and reliable detection
of food-safety-related molecules such as malachite green on the surface
of fruits and vegetables. This paper describes the development of
an easy, cost-effective, and environment-friendly method of detecting
food-safety-related molecules on various food surfaces through SERS.
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