Fabrication of MIL-101(Cr)/silver nanocomposites as SERS substrate for sensitive determination of malachite green and crystal violet in tilapia.

Nanocomposites with multiple functions have attracted much attention in designing novel SERS substrates. In this report, the enrichment ability of MIL-101(Cr) and the local surface plasma resonance (LSPR) of silver nanoparticles are combined to fabricate a SERS substrate denoted as MIL-101-MA@Ag, which can simultaneously produce high-density and uniformly distributed hot spots. Moreover, the enrichment ability of MIL-101(Cr) can further improve the sensitivity by concentrating and transferring the analytes in the vicinity of hot spots. Under optimal conditions, MIL-101-MA@Ag showed good SERS activity for malachite green (MG) and crystal violet (CV), with detection limits as low as 9.5×10 -11 M and 9.2×10 -12 M at 1616 cm -1 , respectively. The prepared substrate has been successfully applied to detect MG and CV in tilapia, the recovery rate of fish tissue extract was 86.4~102%, and the relative standard deviation (RSD) was 8.9~15%. The results demonstrate that MOF-based nanocomposites are expected to be useful SERS substrates and have a universal applicability for the detection of other hazardous molecules.