rGO-NS SERS-based coupled chemometric prediction of acetamiprid residue in green tea.

Pesticide residue in food is of grave concern in recent years. In this paper, a rapid, sensitive, SERS (Surface-enhanced Raman scattering) active reduced-graphene-oxide-gold-nano-star (rGO-NS) nano-composite nanosensor was developed for the detection of acetamiprid (AC) residue in green tea. Different concentrations of AC combined with rGO-NS nano-composite electro-statically, yielded a strong SERS signal linearly with increasing concentration of AC ranging from 1.0 × 10-4 to 1.0 × 103 μg/mL indicating the potential of rGO-NS nano-composite to detect AC in green tea. Genetic algorithm-partial least squares regression (GA-PLS) algorithm was used to develop a quantitative model for AC residue prediction. The GA-PLS model achieved a correlation coefficient (Rc) of 0.9772 and recovery of the real sample of 97.06%-115.88% and RSD of 5.98% using the developed method. The overall results demonstrated that Raman spectroscopy combined with SERS active rGO-NS nano-composite could be utilized to determine AC residue in green tea to achieve quality and safety.