Designing and Development of an Electrochemical Sensor Modified with Molecularly Imprinted Polymer and Carbon Nanotubes for Evaluation of Occupational and Environmental Exposures to Dicloran Pesticide

Dicloran pesticide is used to inhibit the fungal spore germination for different crops. Due to the increasing application of pesticides, evaluating the occupational and environmental exposures by reliable and accurate analytical methods is necessary. This work was aimed to design the high selective sensor to determine the dicloran in biological and environmental samples.
Multi-walls carbon nanotubes and a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) were used as modifiers in the senor composition. A dicloran MIP was synthesized and applied in the carbon paste electrode (CP). After optimizing the electrode composition, it was used to determine the concentration of analyte. Parameters affecting the sensor response, such as sample pH, electrolyte concentration and its pH, and the instrumental parameters of square wave voltammetry were selected following some experiments.
The MIP-CP electrode showed very high recognition ability for determining of dicloran in different matrices (tap water, river water, and urine). The obtained linear range was 1×10-6 to 1×10-9 mol L-1. The detection limit was 4.8×10-10 molL-1. No interfering effects was seen due to the other compounds in matrix.
Selective sensors can successfully used to determine the analyte of interest in different environmental and biological samples without special sample pretreatment before analysis.