Simultaneous detection and identification of thiometon, phosalone, and prothioconazole pesticides using a nanoplasmonic sensor array

Abstract In this work, a colorimetric sensor array has been designed for the identification and discrimination of thiometon (TM) and phosalone (PS) as organophosphate pesticides and prothioconazole (PC) as a triazole pesticide. For this purpose, two different plasmonic nanoparticles including unmodified gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and unmodified silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were used as sensing elements. The principle of the proposed strategy relied on the aggregation AuNPs and AgNPs through the cross-reactive interaction between the target pesticides and plasmonic nanoparticles. Therefore, these aggregation-induced UV-Vis spectra changes were utilized to discriminate the target pesticides with the help of linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Besides, we have employed the bar plots and the heat maps as visual non-statistical methods to differentiate the pesticides in a wide range of concentrations (i.e., 20 to 5000 ng mL-1). Multivariate calibration plots from partial least squares (PLS)- regression indicated that the responses linearly depend on the pesticide concentrations in the range of 100-1000 ng mL-1 with the limit of detections (LOD) of 66.8, 68.3, and 41.4 ng mL-1, for TM, PS, and PC, respectively. Finally, the potential applicability of the proposed sensor array has been evaluated for the detection and identification of the pesticides in the mixtures, water samples, and cucumber fruit.