Nanoscale Mn3O4 Electrocatalyst as Improved Electrode Materials for Electrochemical Sensing of Chloramphenicol Drug

The synthesis of nanoscale metal oxide electrocatalysts is of significant interest and a very active research area, which has an enormous impact on developing new and cost-effective electrochemical antibiotic drug sensors for food product safety and environmental aspects. In the present work, we demonstrate the preparation of nanoscale Mn3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) through a polyol reduction method and their use as electrode materials for chloramphenicol (CAP) determination in food samples. Herein, we compared the catalytic efficiency of three Mn3O4 NPs for CAP detection using the electrochemical sensing method. Interestingly, the small particle size of Mn3O4 NPs modified glassy carbon electrodes (Mn3O4 NPs (i)/GCE) holds excellent electrocatalytic activity toward CAP detection in terms of low limit of detection (LOD = 0.0087 μM) and good sensitivity (1.1000 μA μM–1·cm–2). The developed sensor shows good selectivity, reproducibility, and significant cycle stability (84.8%). Moreover, the developed sensor was successfully employed in milk samples for CAP detection and validated by HPLC with good recovery outcomes at lower concentrations.