Colorimetric sensor array–smartphone–remote server coupling system for rapid detection of saccharides in beverages

A kind of “colorimetric sensor array–smartphone–remote server” coupling system was constructed for rapid on-site testing of saccharides. First, the binding capacity between saccharides and boric acid compounds (boric acid, phenylboronic acid and 3-nitrophenylboronic acid) was studied. The binding capacity of 3-nitrophenylboronic acid was found to be the highest, followed by phenylboronic acid and boric acid. Then a small-scale colorimetric sensor array (2 × 2) of pH indicator based on affinity interaction between 3-nitrophenylboronic acid and saccharides was developed to detect 19 kinds of saccharides. A camera phone was used to acquire the array images before and after reaction, then the self-developed color discrimination software in smartphone was applied to process pictures in order to obtain the color difference image and data of analytes. The color difference data were analyzed by several methods, including principal component analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis and linear discriminant analysis. The analysis results showed that the sensor array (2 × 2) established in this paper has great discriminative capability for 19 kinds of saccharides, and the classification accuracy is as high as 100%. Nineteen different quantitative models of saccharides that showed high accuracy and precision were established based on partial least-square method. Finally, the smartphone was connected to a remote server on which the qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis models for analytes had been established. The color difference data obtained by the smartphone were uploaded to the remote server for the qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis of saccharides. The effectiveness of the “colorimetric sensor array–smartphone–remote server” coupling system in rapid on-site detection of saccharides was further verified by the spike and recovery experiments. The qualitative analysis results showed that this coupling system could distinguish all of the analytes without a mistake, and the quantitative analysis results showed that the predicted values for saccharides were close to the real values.