Nanoscale Mn₃O₄ Electrocatalyst as Improved Electrode Materials for Electrochemical Sensing of Chloramphenicol Drug

The synthesis of nanoscale metal oxide electrocatalysts is of significant interest and a very active research area, which has an enormous impact on developing new and cost-effective electrochemical antibiotic drug sensors for food product safety and environmental aspects. In the present work, we demonstrate the preparation of nanoscale Mn 3 O 4 nanoparticles (NPs) through a polyol reduction method and their use as electrode materials for chloramphenicol (CAP) determination in food samples. Herein, we compared the catalytic efficiency of three Mn 3 O 4 NPs for CAP detection using the electrochemical sensing method. Interestingly, the small particle size of Mn 3 O 4 NPs modified glassy carbon electrodes (Mn 3 O 4 NPs (i)/GCE) holds excellent electrocatalytic activity toward CAP detection in terms of low limit of detection (LOD = 0.0087 μM) and good sensitivity (1.1000 μA μM –1 ·cm –2 ). The developed sensor shows good selectivity, reproducibility, and significant cycle stability (84.8%). Moreover, the developed sensor was successfully employed in milk samples for CAP detection and validated by HPLC with good recovery outcomes at lower concentrations.