Volatolomics-Based Quality Identification of Lycium Barbarum Using cMOF Thin Film Chemiresistors

The sulfur-fumigation process not only induces the chemical transformation of Lycium barbarum (Lb, a widely used traditional Chinese medicine) but also severely influences human health. Given the existing challenges like the complex and time-consuming operation, as well as the high technical demands of the current detection methods for sulfur-fumed Lycium barbarum (SF-Lb), this paper employs a simple chemiresistor to carry out discrimination research between Lb and SF-Lb which have significant differences in volatolomics. The sensor is constructed by a conductive metal-organic framework (cMOF) thin film, Cu 3 (HHTP) 2 , due to its abundant active sites, excellent electron transfer performance as well as the capacity to detect specific groups of volatile organic compounds (volatolomics). Consequently, the response values of the Cu 3 (HHTP) 2 -based sensor to 0.5 g SF-Lb (151.74%) are significantly higher than those to normal Lb (80.07%), identifying SF-Lb simply and rapidly with an accuracy of ∼100%. Our work investigates volatolomics of SF-Lb and establishes a new rapid discrimination method for sulfur-fumed traditional Chinese herbs.