Volatolomics in Fritillarias and Their Identification by Orientation Controlled cMOF Thin Film Chemiresistors

Abstract

As one of the famous traditional Chinese herbal medicines, Fritillariae Cirrhosae Bulbus (FCB) is widely used in the prevention and treatment of respiratory diseases and has the best curative effect among the known fritillarias medicines. Due to the variety, complex sources, similar appearance and shape, it is difficult to distinguish FCB with high curative effect (h-FCB) from other common fritillarias (c-FCB) in the market. In this paper, a very simple chemiresistor is used to identify FCB from three commonly used fritillarias drugs. The sensors are fabricated by anisotropic electrically conductive metal-organic framework (cMOF) thin film Cu₃(HHTP)₂ (Cu-HHTP_[001] and Cu-HHTP_[100]) as active materials owing to their ability to detect specific groups of volatile organic compounds (volatolomics) as the functional motifs of chemiresistor. As a result, the sensors show orientation-dependence identification ability to FCB. Cu-HHTP_[001]- based sensor shows the highest response (344.17%) to 0.5 g h-FCB powder volatiles among its three other c-FCB which is much higher than Cu-HHTP_[100] (135.50%). Ultimately, Cu-HHTP_[001] can realize the identification of FCB with an accuracy of 97.2% in a simple and real-time manner.