An ionic liquid-modified PEDOT/Ti₃C₂T_X based molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensor for pico-molar sensitive...

L-Tryptophan (L-Trp) is essential for the human body and can only be obtained externally. It is important to develop a method to efficiently detect L-Trp in food. In this work, ionic liquid (IL) modified poly(3,4-ethylendioxythiophene)/ Titanium carbide (PEDOT/Ti₃C₂T_X) was used as a substrate material to improve detection sensitivity. Molecular imprinted polymers (MIP) film for specific recognition of L-Trp was fabricated on the surface of modified electrodes using electrochemical polymerization. The monitoring results showed that the molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors (MIECS) exhibited good linearity ranges (10^-6 - 0.1 μM and 0.1-100 μM) with a low detection limit (LOD) of 2.09 × 10^-7 μM. In addition, the MIECS exhibited remarkable stability, reproducibility, and immunity to interference. A good recovery (93.54-99.59%) was demonstrated in the detection of milk. The sensor was expected to be developed as a highly selective and sensitive portable assay, and applied to the detection of L-Trp in food.