Chemiluminescence diminishment on a paper-based analytical device: high throughput determination of β-agonists in swine hair

Abstract

β-Agonists are a group of illegal but widely used feed additives in the stockbreeding industry. In order to achieve simple-to-use, fast and high-throughput testing of this banned chemical, herein we suggest a paper-based analytical device on which a chemiluminescence diminishment method was performed. In this approach, extracts from swine hair samples as well as luminescent reagents, such as luminol and potassium periodate solution, in a low volume were applied to our device. It was found that the light emission was diminished by the β-agonists extracted from the swine hair samples. The degree of diminishment is proportional to the concentration of the β-agonists from 1.0 × 10⁻⁵ to 1.0 × 10⁻⁸ mol L⁻¹. Also, the concentrations of solutions for chemiluminescence were optimized. The mechanism and reaction kinetics of chemiluminescence were discussed as well. The detection limit was obtained as 1.0 × 10⁻⁹ mol L⁻¹, and recoveries from 96% to 110% were achieved, both of which suggested that our method will be favourable in field applications for swine hair samples.