Progress in the application of novel nano-materials to the safety analysis of agricultural products

Abstract

The quality and safety of agricultural products are strongly related to human livelihood. Thus, the government and consumers have recently paid increased attention to the quality and safety of agricultural products. The development of efficient, rapid, and sensitive analytical methods for detecting pesticides, veterinary drugs, heavy metals, mycotoxins, and environmental pollutants in agricultural products is of great significance. Owing to the complexity of many sample matrices and the low concentration of pollutants in a typical sample, appropriate sample pretreatment steps are necessary to enrich pollutants in agricultural products. Solid-phase extraction (SPE) is the most widely used sample pretreatment technology; in this technique, the adsorbent generally determines the selectivity and efficiency of the extraction process. An increasing number of novel materials have been used as SPE adsorbents. The extraction efficiency, extraction selectivity, and analytical throughput of SPE could be greatly improved by combining these novel materials with various extraction modes (e. g., solid-phase microextraction, dispersed SPE, and magnetic SPE (MSPE)) during sample preparation. Because of their large specific surface area and high affinity toward target analytes, nanomaterials are often used as SPE adsorbents, thereby greatly improving the selectivity and sensitivity of the analytical technology. More importantly, these materials have become a priority area of research on preconcentration technologies for trace compounds in agricultural products. This paper summarizes the adsorption characteristics of several new nanomaterials, including magnetic materials, carbon-based materials, metal nanomaterials (MNs), metal oxide nanomaterials (MONs), metal organic frameworks (MOFs), and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). These nanomaterials present numerous advantages, such as large specific surface areas, high adsorption capacities, and tailorable structural designs. MSPE employs magnetic materials as sorbents to afford fast dispersion and efficient recycling when applied to complex sample matrices under an external magnetic field. The use of MSPE can avoid several typical problems associated with SPE such as poor adsorbent packing and high pressure, thereby greatly simplifying the pretreatment process and providing a high flux for sample analysis. Carbon-based materials are powdered or bulk nonmetallic solid materials with carbon as the main component; carbon and nitrogen materials, mesoporous carbon, carbon nanotubes, and graphene are some examples of these materials. These materials provide large specific surface areas, abundant pore structures, good thermal stability, high mechanical strength and adsorption capacity, and controllable morphology. Pure and modified carbon nanomaterials have been successfully used to purify target analytes from agricultural products. Given their unique physical and chemical properties, MNs and MONs have attracted significant interest for use in sample preparation. MNs and MONs with excellent thermal and mechanical stabilities show good resistance to a wide pH range and diverse organic solvents, which is crucial in adsorbent-based extraction methods. The surface of these materials can be easily modified with various ligands to improve their selectivity. MOFs and COFs present many advantages such as large specific surface areas, high porosity, adjustable pore performance, and good thermal stability. Several methods that employ novel adsorbent materials to analyze pollutants in a variety of agricultural products, such as chromatography, spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and other detection technologies, have been established. This paper also reviews the application of adsorbent materials in the analysis of agricultural product quality and safety, and discusses the future development trends of these sorbents in sample preparation for the safety analysis of agricultural products.