Silver nanoparticle-based chemiluminescent sensor array for pesticide discrimination.

In this work, we developed a simple, facile, and highly sensitive nanoparticle-based chemiluminescent (CL) sensor array for the discrimination of organophosphate and carbamate pesticides. This CL sensor array is based on simultaneous utilization of the triple-channel properties of the luminol-functionalized silver nanoparticle (Lum-AgNP) and H2O2 CL system containing CL intensity, the time for CL emissions to appear, and the time to reach the CL peak value, which are able to be measured via a single experiment. The triple-channel properties can be simultaneously altered after interaction with pesticides, producing distinct CL response patterns as "fingerprints" related to each specific pesticide, which was subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) to generate a clustering map. Using this sensor array, five organophosphate and carbamate pesticides, including dimethoate, dipterex, carbaryl, chlorpyrifos, and carbofuran, have been well-distinguished at a concentration of 24 μg/mL. A total of 20 unknown pesticide samples have been successfully identified with an accuracy of 95%. The simple strategy of this study is expected to promote the development of functionalized nanomaterial-based sensor arrays.