CuCeTA nanoflowers as an efficient peroxidase candidate for direct colorimetric detection of glyphosate

Conventional nanozyme-based pesticide detection often requires the assistance of acetylcholinesterase. In this work, a CuCeTA nanozyme was successfully designed for the direct colorimetric detection of glyphosate. Direct detection can effectively avoid the problems caused by cascading with natural enzymes such as acetylcholinesterase. By assembling tannic acid, copper sulfate pentahydrate and cerium(III) nitrate hexahydrate, CuCeTA nanoflowers were prepared. The obtained CuCeTA possessed excellent peroxidase-like activity that could catalyze the oxidation of 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) to blue oxidized TMB in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Glyphosate could effectively inhibit the peroxidase-like activity of CuCeTA while other pesticides (fenthion, chlorpyrifos, profenofos, phosmet, bromoxynil and dichlorophen) did not show significant inhibitory effects on the catalytic activity of CuCeTA. In this way, CuCeTA could be used for the colorimetric detection of glyphosate with a low detection limit of 0.025 ppm. Combined with a smartphone and imageJ software, a glyphosate test paper was designed with a detection limit of 3.09 ppm. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy demonstrated that glyphosate and CuCeTA might be bound by coordination, which could affect the catalytic activity of CuCeTA. Our CuCeTA-based nanozyme system exhibited unique selectivity and sensitivity for glyphosate detection and this work may provide a new strategy for rapid and convenient detection of pesticides.