Ultra-rapid and highly efficient enrichment of organic pollutants via magnetic nanoparticles/mesoporous nanosponge compounds for ultrasensitive nanosensors

Abstract Developing advanced sensing and detection technologies to effectively monitor organic micropollutants in water is under urgent demand in both scientific and industrial communities. Currently, owing to the ultrahigh sensitivity on the single-molecule level with highly informative spectra characteristics, SERS technique is regarded as the most direct and effective detection technique. However, some weakly adsorbed molecules, such as most of persistent organic pollutants, cannot exhibit strong SERS signals, which is a long-standing key challenge that has not been solved. Here, we show an enrichment-typed sensing strategy based on a powerful porous composite material, call mesoporous nanosponge. The nanosponge consists of magnetic nanoparticles immobilized porous β-cyclodextrin polymers, demonstrating remarkable capability of effective and fast removal of organic micropollutants, e.g. ~90% removal efficiency within ~1 min. With the anchoring of magnetic nanoparticles, the current new polymer adsorbent can be easily recycled from water and re-dispersed in ethanol so that the target molecules in the cavity of adsorbent is concentrated, with an enrichment factor up to ~103. By means of the current enrichment strategy, the limit of detection (LOD) of the typical organic pollutants can be significantly improved, i.e. increasing 2~3 orders of magnitude, compared with the detection without molecule enrichment protocol. Consequently, the current enrichment strategy is proved to be applicable in a variety of fields for portable and fast detection, such as Raman and fluorescent.