Single-atom Fe catalytic amplification-gold nanosol SERS/RRS aptamer as platform for the quantification of trace pollutants

Bisphenol A (BPA), as a typical endocrine disruptor, poses a serious threat to human health. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a rapid, sensitive, and simple method for the determination of BPA. In this paper, based on the aptamer-mediated single-atom Fe carbon dot catalyst (SA Fe ) catalyzing the HAuCl 4 -ethylene glycol (EG) nanoreaction, a new SERS/RRS di-mode detection method for BPA was established. The results show that SA Fe exhibits a strong catalytic effect on the HAuCl 4 -EG nanoreaction, which could generate purple gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with resonance Rayleigh scattering (RRS) signals and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) effects. After the addition of BPA aptamer (Apt), it could encapsulate SA Fe through intermolecular interaction, thus inhibiting its catalytic action, resulting in the reduction of AuNPs generated and the decrease of RRS and SERS signals of the system. With the addition of BPA, Apt was specifically combined with BPA, and SA Fe was re-released to restore the catalytic ability; the generated AuNPs increased. As a result of this RRS and SERS signals of the system recovered, and their increment was linear with the concentration of BPA. Thus, the quantification of 0.1–4.0 nM (RRS) and 0.1–12.0 nM (SERS) BPA was realized, and the detection limits were 0.08 nM and 0.03 nM, respectively. At the same time, we used molecular spectroscopy and electron microscopy to study the SA Fe -HAuCl 4 -ethylene glycol indicator reaction, and proposed a reasonable SA Fe catalytic reaction mechanism. Graphical abstract Based on Apt-mediated SA Fe catalysis gold nanoreaction amplification, a SERS/RRS di-mode analytical platform was established for targets such as BPA.