Molecularly Imprinted Photocatalytic light-driven micro/nanomotors for selective degradation and detection of pollutants in water and food

In recent years, the use of toxic pesticides in agriculture has been intensified to fulfill the increasing demand for food, at the expense of a heavily polluted environment. Growing of food using polluted water causes serious risks for human health.

Therefore, Europe has introduced increasingly stringent regulations on food production quality, which require a sensitive and selective screening system that can detect pesticides in water and food.

Micro/nanomotors, combining the enhanced physicochemical properties of micro/nanoscale materials with their autonomous motion capability, have demonstrated a great potential for the fast degradation of pollutants into electrochemically detectable products.

Still, there is no control on their degradation ability, as they ""shoot and degrade"" any pollutant on their path, leading to a non-selective detection.

Moreover, the motion is generally achieved by using toxic fuels or through the decomposition of motors themselves, limiting their practical applications.

The present MSCA IF project ""MIPhmotors"" aims to selectively and sensitively detect toxic pesticides in water and food by employing for the first time the molecular imprinting technique for the preparation of photocatalytic micro/nanomotors with various sizes and shapes.

This innovative class of motors will be able to exploit a renewable and abundant resource as light to move and, at the same time, selectively photodegrade the imprinted pesticide via the specific recognition sites created by molecular imprinting.

Then, the electro-active degradation product will be detected by electrochemical measurements using commercial screen-printed electrodes.The proposed research activity can be extended for the detection of other pollutants, and will open new opportunities in the field of micro/nanomotors and in their application for water purification, sensing and biomedicine.