Fabrication of branched gold copper nanoalloy doped mesoporous graphitic carbon nitride hybrid membrane for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy analysis of carcinogens

Carcinogens in food samples show great potential threat to human health due to their wide distribution and high carcinogenicity . In this work, branched AuCu nanoalloy doped mesoporous graphitic carbon nitride hybrid membrane (mpg-C 3 N 4 /AuCu) was fabricated for SERS analysis of carcinogens including benzidine and zearalenone in food. The AuCu was in-situ grown on mpg-C 3 N 4 to form mpg-C 3 N 4 /AuCu composites. The as-fabricated mpg-C 3 N 4 /AuCu membrane can effectively combined synergistic effect of localized surface plasmon resonance properties of branched AuCu nanoalloy and semiconductor characteristics of mpg-C 3 N 4 . The limit of detection for crystal violet is 1.0 ng/L with enhancement factor of 3.7 × 10 8 . The mechanism of high SERS activity of mpg-C 3 N 4 /AuCu membrane was investigated by density functional theory simulations. The mpg-C 3 N 4 /AuCu membrane was used for direct determination of benzidine, and indirect determination of zearalenone with 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine as markers in food. The limits of detection of SERS method were 0.14 and 0.03 μg/L for benzidine and zearalenone, respectively. It provides a new strategy for design and fabrication of high-quality SERS substrates for carcinogens analysis.