Praseodymium Tungstate-Integrated MXene Nanocomposite: A Cutting-Edge Platform for High-Performance Electrochemical Sensing of Furaltadone in Food and Environmental Samples

Furaltadone (FLD), a nitrofuran antibiotic widely utilized in veterinary medicine, aquaculture, and poultry farming, poses serious carcinogenic and mutagenic risks through food contamination, necessitating the urgent development of sensitive detection methods at trace concentrations. This work demonstrated the first-time use of a praseodymium tungstate-integrated MXene nanocomposite (PrW@MX NCs), prepared via a simple, scalable coprecipitation method followed by ultrasonication, and served as an electrochemical probe for FLD detection. Structural and morphological analyses confirmed the successful formation of the nanocomposite. This unique hybrid structure exhibited noteworthy electrocatalytic performance owing to the strong synergistic interaction between PrW and MXene, which increased the electroactive surface area and electrical conductivity and facilitated rapid ion diffusion. The PrW@MX NCs modified onto the glassy carbon electrode (GCE) demonstrated a low charge-transfer resistance of 119.2 Ω, with a high charge-transfer rate of 3.74 × 10–8. Using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), the sensor achieved an impressive detection limit of 4.1 nM and a wide linear response range of 0.01 to 466.4 μM for FLD. This is the first report employing PrW@MX NCs for electrochemical FLD detection, signifying excellent sensitivity and selectivity. Successful validation in real aquatic samples, which yielded high recovery results, highlights the practical potential for food safety and aquatic environment monitoring.