Gold nanoparticle decorated bismuth vanadate casting on screen-printed electrode for chlortetracycline detection

Abstract

Chlortetracycline is one of the tetracyclines with broad-spectrum antibacterial activity (CTC). Humans rarely use CTC, but farm animals consume vast quantities of it, which causes the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and environmental contamination. There is no report on the AuNPs and BiVO4 nanocomposite being dropped cast on SPCE for electrochemical monitoring of the CTC, and the most expensive, time-consuming, and expensively equipped method is conventional chromatography. Here, we report a simple method for preparing gold nanoparticle decorated bismuth vanadate (AuNPs@BiVO4), which was dropped cast on a screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE). The AuNPs@BiVO4 and AuNPs@BiVO4/SPCE materials were characterized using TEM, SEM-EDX, XPS, DLS, ELS, EIS, and CV, showing a consistent nanocomposite and its electrode. The as-prepared AuNPs@BiVO4/SPCE was used to detect and determine chlortetracycline (CTC) by different pulse potentials in phosphate buffer pH 7.0. The electrode possessed a wide linear range of 0.99–19.06 µM, with obtained LOD = 0.15 µM, LOQ = 0.49 µM, and sensitivity = 0.059 μA μM−1 cm−2. It also exhibited good selectivity, stability, and repeatability, recovering 87.14 %–100 % for detecting CTC in Mili Q and tap water. The findings show that the straightforward approach for making AuNPs@BiVO4 nanocomposite and an AuNPs@BiVO4/SPCE electrode is consistent with electrochemical CTC monitoring. Thus, the proposed electrode could be applied for the detection and determination of CTC in water sources and has the potential to be used for real sample analysis.