Curcumin is a compound of great importance in the food industry due to its biological and pharmacological properties, which include being an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, and anticarcinogenic. This paper proposes the synthesis of an electrochemical sensor based on molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) and MWCNT by drop casting deposited on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) for the selective quantification of curcumin in food samples. The synthesized compounds are characterized by Fourier transform infrared (IR), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and electrochemical techniques such as cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). The optimal conditions for further experiments were determined by selecting these parameters. We examined three food products, commercial capsules, turmeric rhizomes, and commercial turmeric powder, employing both electrochemical and HPLC methods for the analysis. The electrochemical method revealed a limit of detection (LOD) value of 0.1365 µmol L-1, compared with the HPLC analysis, which gave a value of 3.55 µmol L-1. Furthermore, the MIP material demonstrated superior selectivity for the analyte compared to potential interferents. The recovery percentage, determined using the HPLC method, fell within the range of 87.5% to 102.6.
Keywords: curcumin; electrochemical sensor; molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs).