Fly-antennae-inspired biomass-based fluorescent platform for NH3 quantitative detection and visual real-time monitoring of seafood spoilage

Traditional strategies for quantitative detection of NH3 and monitoring of seafood spoilage still have some pervasive issues of cumbersome operation, time-consuming, high-cost, and inefficient real-time monitoring, and visualization. Integration of biomass-based materials and aggregation-induced emission (AIE) fluorescence probes exhibit conceivable potential in seafood detection and environmental monitoring. Herein, a fly-antennae-inspired biomass-based solid-state fluorescent platform (PAA-FP) with effective, easy-to-use, reusable, low-cost and highly sensitive characteristics is nanoengineered for NH3 quantitative detection (detection limit = 0.5 ppm) and visual real-time monitoring of seafood spoilage using smartphones. The PAA-FP possesses an anticipative "fly-antennae-like" microstructure and offers selective recognition of NH3 by naked eyes in daylight with excellent solid-state fluorescence properties. Moreover, PAA-FP is simply reused at least 5 times after AcOH fumigation. Comprehensive application experiments substantiate that PAA-FP successfully achieves quantitative detection of NH3 and realizes the visual real-time daylight monitoring of food spoilage using a simple color recognizing smartphone software. The present study demonstrates an effective fabrication strategy to explore various multifunctional biomass-based materials for sensing hazardous and noxious substances.