SERS determination and multivariate classification of antibiotics in chicken meat using gold nanoparticle-decorated electrospun PVA nanofibers.

The fabrication of SERS substrate by gold nanoparticle-decorated polyvinyl alcohol electrospun nanofibers which has been used to detect trace sensing of two widely used poultry antibiotics doxycycline hydrochloride and enrofloxacin is demonstrated. The performance of the backscattered Raman signals from the proposed SERS substrate has been initially evaluated with two standard Raman active compounds namely malachite green and rhodamine-6G. The limit of detection of the proposed substrate is estimated to be 7.32 nM. Following this, the usability of the proposed SERS substrate has been demonstrated through the detection of the aforementioned antibiotics in chicken meat samples. The presence of antibiotics in chicken meat sample has been validated with the standard analytical tool of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and the results were compared with the proposed sensing technique. Further, principal component analysis has been performed to classify the antibiotics that are present in the field-collected meat samples.