The paper presents a molecular imprinted graphite electrode for selective and sensitive detection of piperine (1-Propylpiperidine) in Piper nigrum (black pepper). Poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide) (PDMAM) was utilized as a functional monomer directing polymerization of uniform molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) layers on the surface of the graphite layer using ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as cross-linker with piperine (PIP) as template molecules. The formation of imprinting, non-imprinting, and elution of analytes within the polymer matrix were studied by field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), UV–visible (UV–Vis) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The electrochemical response of piperine was evaluated through differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) using a PDMAM-MIP@G electrode that showed an oxidation peak at 1.25 ± 0.15 V. Under optimized experimental conditions, DPV peak currents were linear over two concentration ranges (0.001–1 µM and 1–200 µM). A limit of detection (LOD) was found to be 0.0006 µM. Developed electrode yielded high selectivity, sensitivity (12.92 µA/µM (lower linear range) and 0.33 µA/µM (upper linear range)), promising reproducibility, long-term stability (3.85 % decrease in response over 28 days), and interference immunity. The developed PDMAM-MIP@G electrode was applied to real samples using four branded pepper powder procured from local market and the sensor data was recorded. A convolutional neural network (CNN) driven prediction model has been proposed to predict the piperine concentration. Among the four CNN models tested, the best model, averaged over 50 runs, achieved a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.268, a mean prediction error of 2.35 %, and a R-squared value of 0.93 on the testing set when compared with reference values obtained from reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC).
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