High-sensitivity pesticide detection using particle-enhanced resonant Raman scattering

Abstract

The use of pesticides in agriculture has raised concerns, as even a small residual of pesticide on food can be harmful. It is therefore of great importance to develop a robust technique to detect tiny amounts of pesticides. Although Raman spectroscopy is frequently used for chemical identification, it is not suitable for extremely low molecular concentrations. We propose a technique called particle-enhanced resonant Raman spectroscopy to detect extremely low concentrations of pesticides, where gold nanoparticles of desired plasmonic resonance are synthesized to match the resonance in Raman scattering. We successfully demonstrated the detection of extremely low amounts of pesticides on oranges.

Advancements and Applications of Raman Spectroscopy in Rapid Quality and Safety Detection of Fruits and Vegetables

“…Regarding safety detection, Ranjan et al [70] proposed a gold nanoparticle-enhanced resonance Raman spectroscopy technique to detect trace concentrations of pesticides. This technique uses gold nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy signals to observe the corresponding characteristic peaks for detecting low concentrations of pesticides of about 10 −6 mol/L.…”

Plasmonic transfer of near-field light from subwavelength objects through a gold-nanorod chain

“…This method is one of the most popular methods owing to the high quality and high reproducibility, 22,23) which involves a twostep growth; details are reported in our previous publication. 24) One of the chemicals used in the growth process is cetrimonium bromide (CTAB), which acts as a surfactant to form a bilayer molecular coating on the surfaces of the gold nanoparticles. This surfactant prevented the aggregation of nanoparticles in the solution.…”