Chromaticity Evolutionary Detection of Food Contaminant Semicarbazide through an Upconversion Luminescence-Based Nanosensor.

Semicarbazide (SEM) is a widespread carcinogenic and neurotoxic food contaminant, originating from the metabolite of antibiotic nitrofurazone, which is used in aquaculture, or thermal decomposition byproduct of a flour blowing agent azodicarbonamide. Although optical detection technologies are powerful tools considering the advantages of fast response and visualization detection, there are few optical nanosensors for highly sensitive and visual assays of SEM due to no luminescence response and UV absorbance of SEM. Herein, an upconversion luminescence (UCL)-based nanosensor was designed for visual detection of SEM with high sensitivity and good selectivity. The nanosensor was constructed by combining upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) and phosphomolybdic acid (PMA), which was used as the specific recognition element of SEM. The developed nanosensor exhibited selective absorbance enhancement and UCL quenching behavior with the addition of SEM based on the inner filter effect (IFE). Since the change in absorbance translated into an exponential change in the luminescence, the sensitivity of the nanosensor was greatly improved. The nanosensor realized a highly sensitive and visual response to SEM in the linear range of 0.5-16 μM with a low limit of detection of 58 nM. Moreover, satisfactory recovery values ranging from 90 to 112% in spiked real samples indicated the practical applicability of the nanosensor. The nanosensor designed here provides a sensitive and convenient sensing strategy for visual detection of hazardous substances and is expected to develop the upconversion sensing application in food safety.