A novel electrochemical sensor based on MoS2 electrospun nanofibers and polyoxometalate composite for the simultaneous detection of ractopamine and clenbuterol

A novel electrochemical sensor based on MoS2 nanofibers and polyoxometalate H3PMo12O40 (HPMo) composite was used for the highly selective and sensitive simultaneous detection of ractopamine (RAC) and clenbuterol (CLB). The electrochemical sensor was prepared firstly by MoS2 electrospun nanofibers as polyoxometalate (POM) carrier. Then, the morphology structure and physicochemical properties of the nanofiber composites modified electrode were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopic (SEM), nitrogen adsorption/desorption isotherms, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and electrochemical technologies. The results showed that HPMo decorated MoS2 electrospun nanofibers as modified electrodes can not only promote electron transfer but also enhance electrochemical sensing ability towards RAC and CLB. Differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) results proved that the proposed sensor exhibits good stability, high sensitivity and selectivity in terms of a wide range of 1–70 μM for RAC and 1–350 μM for CLB and a low detection limit of 0.056 μM for RAC and 0.085 μM for CLB, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed sensors were applied to real pork sample analysis, which the recovery of RAC and CLB were 98.5 % − 105.6 % and 98.9 % − 103.1 %, respectively. The results indicate that the electrochemical sensors have a wide application prospect in the detection of β-agonists in animal food sample.