Sudarshan Satish, Gokul Sridharan, S Asif Sharif, D Dhanraj Ganapathy, Ashok K. Sundramoorthy
The growing occurrence of antibiotic residues in pharmaceutical products and environmental matrices underscores the urgent need for sensitive, sustainable, and cost-effective sensing platforms. In this study, a green synthesised palladium/graphene (Pd/ Gr) nanohybrid was fabricated using Strobilanthes kunthiana leaf extract and employed as an efficient electrocatalytic material for the electrochemical detection of Sparfloxacin (SFX), a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. The Pd/Gr nanohybrid was coated onto a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) and thoroughly characterised using FESEM, UV-Vis, and FTIR analyses, which confirmed the successful synthesis of the nanocomposite and its high electrocatalytic properties. The as-prepared Pd/Gr/GCE sensor exhibited a linear detection range for SFX from 0.05 to 38.00 μM with the lowest detection limit (LOD) of 0.015 μM. Furthermore, this new sensor demonstrated excellent analytical performance for the detection of SFX in real-world sample with the recovery values between 100.5% and 106.8% in human urine and tap water samples.