Sulfhydryl-functionalized 3D MXene-AuNPs enabled electrochemical sensors for the selective determination of Pb2+, Cu2+ and Hg2+ in grain

Herein, we made 3D MXene-AuNPs by in situ growth of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) on the surface of MXene by chemical reduction method, and then introduced three sulfhydryl (-SH) compounds as functionalized modifiers attached to the AuNPs to form a highly selective composite material for the detection of Pb2+, Cu2+, and Hg2+, respectively. The doping of AuNPs changes the microstructure of 2D MXene and generates more active sites. On a sensing platform based on ITO array electrodes, the detection system was optimised with sensitivities up to 1.157, 0.846 and 0.799 μA·μg−1Lcm−2 (Pb2+, Cu2+, and Hg2+). The selectivity of MXene@AuNPs was effectively improved by sulfhydryl group modification. In the range of 1–1300 μg L−1, the detection limits of three ions were 0.07, 0.13 and 0.21 μg L−1. In addition, this method can efficiently and accurately detect heavy metal ions in four cereal samples with consistent results with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.