Highly selective carbendazim fungicide sensing performance of nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots encapsulated aminated-UiO-66 zirconium metal-organic framework electrocatalyst

A well-known benzimidazole insecticide called carbendazim (CBM) is used in agriculture to both prevent and treat fungal plant diseases. The health of people is seriously threatened by residual CBM in water regions and food. In this study, we designed and prepared nitrogen-doped-carbon quantum dots (N-CQDs) encapsulated in zirconium metal-organic framework (MOF) UiO-66-NH2 (N-CQDs@UiO-66-NH2) electrocatalyst by facile in-situ encapsulation technique. The as-prepared electrocatalyst has been used for selective electrochemical detection of carbendazim (CBM) fungicide. The N-CQDs@UiO-66-NH2 coated screen printed electrode (SPCE) revealed a highly selective CBM detection ability with detection parameters of 0.02 – 126 µM and 5.8 nM as detection range and detection limit respectively. The highly selective CBM sensor performance of the N-CQDs@UiO-66-NH2 electrocatalyst was >95 % and the real-time minimum CBM retrieval response in vegetable and environmental water samples was 96 % and 97 % respectively.