The determination of brominated flame retardants is of great importance, but remains a challenge. Particularly, universal and facile approaches are limited. Here we report a new general approach, combining molecular imprinting and electrospinning, for the efficient and facile imprinting sensor of 2,4,6-tribromophenol (TBP), which was used as a "novel" brominated flame retardant. With TBP as the template molecular, β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) as the functional monomer, and poly-vinylbutyral (PVB) as the electro-spinning matrix, the nanofiber film was deposited on the glassy carbon electrode (GCE) via electrospinning technique directly. The β-CD-PVB/GCE sensor system exhibited excellent TBP sensing performances, such as a low detection limit (6.29 × 10-10 mol·L-1) at room temperature, selective recognition to TBP/phenol/4-methyl-phenol, and good regeneration performance. The approach of fabricating a molecular imprinting nanofiber sensor may shed new light in the detection of other phenolic pollutants.
Keywords: 2,4,6-tribromophenol; electrochemistry sensor; electrospinning; molecular imprinting.