Visual and portable detection of metronidazole realized by metal-organic framework flexible sensor and smartphone scanning

Metronidazole (MNZ) is a type of antibiotic that can help people and animals cure bacterial infections, however, abuse of MNZ has posed a threat to human health. Hence, portable and visual detection of MNZ is meaningful for food safety and rational administration of drugs, but full of challenges. Hence, a porous three-dimensional Tb-based metal-organic framework (MOF) {(CH3 )2 NH2 <middle dot>[Tb5 (TDA)8 (H2 O)2 ] <middle dot>6DMF <middle dot>2C2 H5 OH}n (TDA-Tb) with good solvent and pH stabilities was prepared, and the framework possesses one-dimensional channels with a diameter of 12 & Aring; along the c-axis. Experiment results suggest that the synthesized TDA-Tb can selectively and sensitively detect MNZ in water, and the limit of detection (LOD) is as low as 4.1 x 10-7 mol/L. Moreover, a flexible sensor TDATb-M was also constructed by incorporating TDA-Tb into membrane materials for convenient usage. And the TDA-Tb-M firstly realized portable and visual detection of MNZ through smartphone scanning, which may inspire more probes with wide application ranges. (c) 2024 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.