A dual action electrochemical molecular imprinting sensor based on FeCu-MOF and RGO/PDA@MXene hybrid synergies for trace detection of ribavirin

Abstract

In this study, we designed a molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensor based on the reduced graphene oxide/polydopamine@Mxene (RPM) and FeCu-MOF for the detection of antiviral drug ribavirin (RBV). The RPM composite enhances the active surface area and electron transport capacity of the sensor, and the incorporation of FeCu-MOF can not only further improve the catalytic performance of the material, but also enables the sensor to harness the electrical reduction signal of H₂O₂. Furthermore, we developed an optimized molecularly imprinted polymer via density functional theory (DFT) to enhance the sensor's specificity and sensitivity for RBV detection. The sensor demonstrated detection limits as low as 0.053 nmol L⁻¹ and 0.086 nmol L⁻¹ for differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and current-time (I-t), respectively. The sensor proposed in this paper was applied to the analysis of real food and surface water samples, yielding recovery rates ranging from 98.3 % to 106.7 %, reaching a satisfactory degree.