In situ reduced silver nanoparticles embedded molecularly imprinted reusable sensor for selective and sensitive SERS detection of Bisphenol A

Abstract Sensitive and selective detection of target analyte is very important in many fields such as commodity inspection and quality monitoring. In this work, we constructed a MIPs@AgNPs surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensor by in-situ preparation of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) inside molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) matrix for bisphenol A (BPA) detection. In-situ formed AgNPs are evenly distributed and closely packed in the matrix, which is beneficial for hot spot formation and analyte-AgNPs affinity. Our MIPs@AgNPs sensor shows good BPA selectivity against structurally related molecules such as bisphenol AF (BPAF) and diethylstilbestrol (DES). Excellent sensitivity of this MIPs@AgNPs sensor is demonstrated with the detection limit of at least 5 × 10−8 mol L−1 for BPA. This sensor is reliable for the quantitative detection of BPA in real samples, validated with results of HPLC. Regeneration of this kind of SERS sensor can be easily realized by solvent rinsing and NaBH4 reduction. Together with the advantages of ease-of-fabrication, selective recognition, sensitivity and reusability, this kind of MIPs@AgNPs SERS sensor will have a promising practical applications.