Rational construction of novel strontium hexaferrite decorated graphitic carbon nitrides for highly sensitive detection of neurotoxic organophosphate pesticide in fruits

As a growing aspect of agriculture purposes, an extensive number of pesticides and insecticides that have been used to produce yield, and particularly, through toxic organo-pesticides and herbicide. Moreover, the long-term usage of organo-pesticides leads to health problems, which causes serious health threat to human beings. Therefore, monitoring the level of organo-pesticides in food products is highly essential for practical applications to ensure food safety. Herein, we successfully synthesized strontium hexaferrite (nanorods) decorated on porous graphitic carbon nitride (SrFe12O19/g-C3N4) electrocatalyst through the incorporation of metal precursors such as strontium nitrate, ferric nitrate, melamine and glucose via a facile hydrothermal process with excellent electrochemical performance towards the detection of fenitrothion (FTN). The structural and chemical features of the as synthesized SrFe12O19/g-C3N4 electrocatalyst were characterized by various spectroscopic and analytical methods. The SrFe12O19/g-C3N4/SPCE shows a most-improved electrocatalytic performances compared to other modified and unmodified SPCEs. Mainly, the SrFe12O19 NRs were highly interconnected with the g-C3N4 matrix, which provides a sufficient electrocatalytic ability for the rapid electrochemical performances and it has achieved higher BET surface area of 325 m2/g. Moreover, our proposed electrochemical sensor performs a good detection range from 0.005 to 378.15 μM with a low detection limit of 0.0014 μM (S/N=3) and sensitivity of the modified sensor is 19.23 μA μM−1 cm−2. The practicality of the proposed SrFe12O19/g-C3N4 modified sensor was manifested by the profitably determination of FTN in various fruits samples with acceptable recoveries.