Ultrafast and field-based detection of methamphetamine in hair with Au nanocake-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

The disaster and devastation from abuse of Methamphetamine (MAMP) have a serious impact on people's mental and physical health. Developing a rapid and accurate method to screen drug suspects and thus control MAMP abuse is essential to social security. Hair analysis for MAMP detection is conside...

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Published in:Analytica chimica acta 2022-12, Vol.1235, p.340531-340531, Article 340531
Main Authors: Peng, Wei, Zong, Xiao-Qi, Xie, Tang-Tang, Zhou, Jing-Wen, Yue, Mu-Fei, Wen, Bao-Ying, Wang, Yao-Hui, Chen, Jie, Zhang, Yue-Jiao, Li, Jian-Feng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Au nanocakes
Drug detection
Hair
Methamphetamine
Portable Raman spectrometer
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Summary:The disaster and devastation from abuse of Methamphetamine (MAMP) have a serious impact on people's mental and physical health. Developing a rapid and accurate method to screen drug suspects and thus control MAMP abuse is essential to social security. Hair analysis for MAMP detection is considered to be one of the most potential methods for monitoring drug abuse due to its convenient sample collection, easy for storage and long traceability period. However, the current accurate detection of MAMP in hair primarily utilizes hyphenated mass spectrometry (MS) techniques, but it is not suitable for field-based detection due to the bulky instrument. Hence, developing alternative portable detection techniques for rapid on-site detection of MAMP in hair is an urgent problem to be solved. Here, the high-performance Au nanocakes (Au NCs) were constructed as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates to detect MAMP in hair, realizing 5 min ultrafast and ultrasensitive detection utilizing a portable Raman spectrometer. Experiments and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations show that Au NCs have stronger enhancement than Au nanospheres (Au NPs), and 0.5 ppb (3.35 × 10−9 M) MAMP standard is stably detected by Au NCs as an enhanced substrate. A strategy of liquid-liquid microextraction was exploited to eliminate the interference of complex matrices in hair. This method exhibited excellent reproducibility and temporal stability across different drug addicts (relative standard deviation was 5.14% within 160 s). Our approach shows great promise in public safety, providing a rapid and accurate method to detect in hair by SERS. An ultra-sensitive Au nanocake as SERS substrate was constructed to field-based detection of methamphetamine in hair within 5 min utilizing a portable Raman spectrometer. [Display omitted] •Ultra-sensitive Au nanocake was constructed for detection of MAMP in hair.•The detection limit for the MAMP standard is 0.5 ppb.•Interferences in hair are eliminated with a liquid-liquid microextraction strategy.•This facile approach provides a stable platform for field-based analysis.
ISSN:0003-2670
1873-4324
DOI:10.1016/j.aca.2022.340531