Concentration Energy Ion Channels with Molecular-Structure Dual Recognition for Sustainable Environmental Monitoring
Pesticides are vital for crop and seafood production but leave persistent residues that pose risks to ecosystems and human health through bioaccumulation. The detection of pesticide residues requires highly sensitive and selective technologies. Herein, a nanochannel sensor capable of dual recognition of ionic charge and molecular conformation based on molecular imprinting technology (MIT) is presented, offering a significant improvement in selectivity and sensitivity over traditional nanopore sensors. The MIT-based nanochannels with imprinting sites tailored to pesticide molecules go beyond recognizing the molecular size and surface functional groups, enabling the detection of molecular configurations. In this research, the approach enables the detection of 10 pesticide molecules with detection limits (LODs) ranging from 12.9 to 26.9 pM, achieving two orders of magnitude lower than fluorescence-based methods. Density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations revealed hydrogen bonding as the dominant interaction in the imprinting process. This versatile nanochannel construction method, proposed for the first time, provides dual recognition capabilities and is expected to advance nanochannel sensing while promoting sustainable environmental development.
Authors
- Runhao Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2985-2015)
- Kang Liang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3985-7688)
- Abuduheiremu Awati (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0061-7871)
- Chengmin Hu
- Biao Kong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3251-5071)
- Shan Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2273-6843)
- Qirui Liang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3119-6635)
- Lei Jiang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4579-728X)
- Xin Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4393-2804)
- Lei Xie
- Dongyuan Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8440-6902)
- Yeqing Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8539-1636)
- Yuanbo Song
- Huiping Zeng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8665-4974)
- Yaxin Guo
Institutions
- Qingdao University (CN)
- Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (CN)
- Harbin Engineering University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Fudan University (CN)
- UNSW Sydney (AU)
- Inspire (CH)
- Division of Materials Science and Engineering (AU)
- Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry (CN)
- Green Chemistry (PL)
- Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials (CN)
- Xi'an Jiaotong University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of the American Chemical Society
- Published
- 2025-05-20
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c03283
- Citations
- 10
- Primary Topic
- Electrochemical Analysis and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.15
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging
- National Key Research and Development Program of China