Ultrafast and field-based detection of methamphetamine in hair with Au nanocake-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Wei Peng; Xiao-Qi Zong; Tang-Tang Xie; Jing-Wen Zhou; Mu-Fei Yue; Bao-Ying Wen; Yao-Hui Wang; Jie Chen; Yue-Jiao Zhang; Jian-Feng Li

doi:10.1016/j.aca.2022.340531

Ultrafast and field-based detection of methamphetamine in hair with Au nanocake-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Anal Chim Acta. 2022 Dec 1:1235:340531. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2022.340531. Epub 2022 Oct 18.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ MOE Key Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis and Instrumentation, State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, iChEM, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, College of Energy, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China.
² The Testing and Technology Center for Industrial Products, Shenzhen Customs, Shenzhen, 518067, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Drug Monitoring and Control, Drug Intelligence and Forensic Center, Ministry of Public Security, Beijing, 100193, China. Electronic address: chemcj@139.com.
⁴ MOE Key Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis and Instrumentation, State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, iChEM, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, College of Energy, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China. Electronic address: zhangyuejiao@xmu.edu.cn.
⁵ MOE Key Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis and Instrumentation, State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, iChEM, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, College of Energy, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China; Innovation Laboratory for Sciences and Technologies of Energy Materials of Fujian Province (IKKEM), Xiamen, 361005, China. Electronic address: li@xmu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36368821
DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2022.340531

Abstract

The disaster and devastation from abuse of Methamphetamine (MAMP) have a serious impact on people's mental and physical health. Developing a rapid and accurate method to screen drug suspects and thus control MAMP abuse is essential to social security. Hair analysis for MAMP detection is considered to be one of the most potential methods for monitoring drug abuse due to its convenient sample collection, easy for storage and long traceability period. However, the current accurate detection of MAMP in hair primarily utilizes hyphenated mass spectrometry (MS) techniques, but it is not suitable for field-based detection due to the bulky instrument. Hence, developing alternative portable detection techniques for rapid on-site detection of MAMP in hair is an urgent problem to be solved. Here, the high-performance Au nanocakes (Au NCs) were constructed as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates to detect MAMP in hair, realizing 5 min ultrafast and ultrasensitive detection utilizing a portable Raman spectrometer. Experiments and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations show that Au NCs have stronger enhancement than Au nanospheres (Au NPs), and 0.5 ppb (3.35 × 10^-9 M) MAMP standard is stably detected by Au NCs as an enhanced substrate. A strategy of liquid-liquid microextraction was exploited to eliminate the interference of complex matrices in hair. This method exhibited excellent reproducibility and temporal stability across different drug addicts (relative standard deviation was 5.14% within 160 s). Our approach shows great promise in public safety, providing a rapid and accurate method to detect in hair by SERS.

Keywords: Au nanocakes; Drug detection; Hair; Methamphetamine; Portable Raman spectrometer.

MeSH terms

Gold / chemistry
Hair / chemistry
Humans
Mass Spectrometry
Metal Nanoparticles* / chemistry
Methamphetamine* / analysis
Reproducibility of Results
Spectrum Analysis, Raman / methods

Substances

Methamphetamine
Gold