MIP-Based Portable Sensors for the Simultaneous Analysis of Multiple Food Additives

Abstract

With portable capacitative sensors, a universal method has been established to analyze different organic compounds from real samples. Firstly, the object compounds serve as templates in the preparation of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). The resulted polymers are promising materials to fabricate highly sensitive and highly selective sensors for the templates. Low mass transfer resistance in the cryogenically synthesized MIPs makes it very convenient to remove interfering substances, just by rinsing the chromatographic column-like sensors with an eluant. Five food additives were selected to testify the portable detection platform. Good linear ranges are obtained for sunset yellow (8.60 × 10⁻¹⁰–3.11 × 10⁻⁴ mg), sodium cyclamate (9.10 × 10⁻¹⁰–5.61 × 10⁻⁴ mg), citric acid (3.40 × 10⁻¹⁰–1.12 × 10⁻³ mg), benzoic acid (5.50 × 10⁻¹¹–3.56 × 10⁻⁵ mg), and glyceryl monostearate (2.35 × 10⁻⁸–6.56 × 10⁻³ mg). In turn the detection limits are 4.79 × 10⁻¹⁰ mg, 2.63 × 10⁻¹⁰ mg, 1.34 × 10⁻¹⁰ mg, 3.24 × 10⁻¹¹ mg, and 3.71 × 10⁻⁹ mg respectively. Finally “interference-free” analysis has been accomplished for the additives in various food samples from local markets.