Continuously tunable optical filter for use in resonance Raman spectroscopy

Smartphone-Integrated Photoacoustic Analytical Device for Point-of-Care Testing of Food Contaminant Azodicarbonamide

Azodicarbonamide (ADA) is widely used as a flour additive due to its oxidizing and bleaching properties, but it reacts with wet flour during heat processing and is easily decomposed into semicarbazide with genotoxicity and carcinogenicity. In order to improve the efficiency of food safety supervision and expand the scope of food safety control, it is of great significance to develop a facile method for point-of-care testing (POCT) of ADA. Herein, a field-portable and universal smartphone-based photoacoustic (PA) integration device is constructed for quantitative POCT of ADA in flour. The recognition probe Prussian blue with favorable stability is loaded on a flexible substrate for fabricating a portable test strip. In the presence of target ADA, the PA signal changes driven by a modulated 808 nm laser beam can be conveniently collected through the recording application (Audio Lab) of the smartphone. By combining the economic test strip and portable PA device with smartphone readout, it not only greatly simplifies the operation steps but also dramatically reduces the size and cost of the instrument. There is a favorable linear relationship between the PA signal and ADA concentration in the range of 10-200 μmol L^-1 (R² = 0.9928), and a detection limit of 5 μmol L^-1 obtained is much lower than the maximum allowable ADA level in the extract of flour (388 μmol L^-1). The present miniature PA device with strong POCT ability holds enormous public health significance and economic value in the field of food safety, especially in resource-limited settings.