Food Additives & Contaminants: Part A

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Detection of carbendazim in oranges with metal

grating integrated microfluidic sensor in terahertz

Yanqun Tong, Liuxin Ding, Kuiguo Han, Xiaobo Zou, Shiyan Wang, Zhang
Wen, Yunxia Ye & Xudong Ren

To cite this article: Yanqun Tong, Liuxin Ding, Kuiguo Han, Xiaobo Zou, Shiyan Wang, Zhang
Wen, Yunxia Ye & Xudong Ren (2022) Detection of carbendazim in oranges with metal grating
integrated microfluidic sensor in terahertz, Food Additives & Contaminants: Part A, 39:9,
1555-1564, DOI: 10.1080/19440049.2022.2093983

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19440049.2022.2093983

Published online: 15 Jul 2022.

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FOOD ADDITIVES & CONTAMINANTS: PART A
2022, VOL. 39, NO. 9, 1555–1564
https://doi.org/10.1080/19440049.2022.2093983

Detection of carbendazim in oranges with metal grating integrated

microfluidic sensor in terahertz
Yanqun Tonga,b, Liuxin Dinga, Kuiguo Hanc, Xiaobo Zouc, Shiyan Wanga, Zhang Wenc, Yunxia Yea,b and
Xudong Rena
a
School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China; bInstitute of Micro-nano Optoelectronics and Terahertz
Technology, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China; cSchool of Food and Biological Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

A novel microfluidic metal grating integrated terahertz sensor has been designed, which is Received 3 March 2022
composed of a metal microstructure array-dielectric layer-metal layer, where the dielectric Accepted 20 June 2022
layer is the microfluidic channel carrying the analyte. By adjusting the structural parameters
KEYWORDS
of the metal grating sensor, a highly confined electromagnetic field can be obtained in the
Terahertz; metal grating;
microfluidic channel, thereby significantly enhancing the interaction between the analyte carbendazim; spectro-
and the terahertz wave and improving the terahertz detection sensitivity. The metal grating scopic detection
described in this paper is composed of an array of square holes, which is manufactured
using laser micromachining technology, so that the measurement method is simplified and
improved. The results show that the addition of different concentrations of carbendazim
solution resulted in a redshift of the overall spectrum, with the highest sensitivity reaching
8.773 GHz/mg L
1, which is about eight times more sensitive than the traditional terahertz
transmission sensor. The relative error of using this method to determine carbendazim levels
in orange juice samples was less than 5.3%. The terahertz time-domain spectroscopy tech-
nology combined with the metal grating integrated microfluidic sensor can improve the
sensitivity of sample detection and realize the rapid detection and analysis of
trace elements.

Introduction (Armenta et al. 2005; Kang et al. 2019) are non-

Pesticides are indispensable to agricultural devel-
opment, but excessive use can cause serious harm
to human health, such as dizziness, vomiting and
diarrhea, even death, but also accumulating in
the human body over time and affecting the
health of the next generation (Carvalho 2006;
Zhang et al. 2015; Kaur and Sinha 2019).
Therefore, for the sake of protecting consumers’
food safety, it is necessary to detect pesticide resi-
dues in food before eating. Traditional detection
methods such as liquid chromatography (Khan
et al. 2009), gas chromatography (Tahboub et al.
2005) and immunoassay (Conzuelo et al. 2013)
have been often used to detect pesticide residues.
These detection methods are very sensitive but
the sample pre-treatment and detection process is
cumbersome, and the analysis time can be long.
Other methods based on spectral analysis
destructive and time-saving, but they suffer from
lack of sensitivity. Thus, new technologies need
to be developed to achieve both rapid detection
and improved sensitivity.
Terahertz radiation has been recognized as a
‘hot’ research area over the past decade. Because
of its high signal-to-noise ratio, low energy, good
coherence, non-destructive testing and other
characteristics, it has attracted wide attention in
the fields of communications, hazardous materi-
als detection, and biomedicine (Shin et al. 2018;
Smolyanskaya et al. 2018; Hassan et al. 2019; Ren
et al. 2019). Since the rotational and vibrational
energy levels of most chemical and biological
molecules are in the terahertz band, they have
great advantages in the analysis of biochemical
molecules. Therefore, terahertz time-domain
spectroscopy (THz-TDS) has been used to detect
pesticide residues. Traditional terahertz detection

CONTACT Yanqun Tong tongyanqun_99@163.com School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
ß 2022 Jiangsu University
1556 Y. TONG ET AL.
Figure 1. (a) Schematic of the experimental system, diagram of metal grating detecting the sample by (b) transmission method
and (d) reflection method, the terahertz (c) transmission and (e) reflection spectrum of the sample.
uses the tablet method (Hua and Zhang 2010;
Baek et al. 2016), which has limited sensitivity
and it is not easy to detect trace elements.
In order to improve the detection sensitivity,
terahertz biosensors have been continuously
developed for pesticide residues. At present, tera-
hertz biosensors are mostly made of metamateri-
als, which are artificial electromagnetic materials
in the sub-wavelength scale range. They have the
advantages of high sensitivity, fast response and
label free detection (Xu et al. 2017; Qin et al.
2018; Liu 2020; Nie et al. 2020). To maximize the
interaction between light and analyte, the micro-
fluidic chip technology developed in recent years
provides new ideas for the production of tera-
hertz biosensors, by combining metamaterials
and microfluidic chips for the detection of
different organic solutions (methanol-water, etha-
nol-water and isopropanol-water) and glucose
solutions in the terahertz band (Liang et al. 2018;
Shih et al. 2018), detection of polystyrene beads
in isopropanol (IPA) solutions (Shih et al. 2017)
etc. Nowadays, metamaterials are often fabricated
by ultraviolet lithography, which is complicated
and time-consuming. Metal grating surface plas-
mons (SPPs) also show phenomena of abnormal
transmission and local enhancement of light field
(Dai et al. 2018). In recent years, the terahertz
region has also been used for the detection of
biological and chemical substances (Yoshida et al.
2007; Zhen et al. 2009), however there are
few articles.
In the case of carbendazim pesticide, because
of its broad-spectrum activity and low production
cost, it is often used for sterilization of agricul-
tural products such as cereals, vegetables and
fruits, etc. However, the use of high doses is
destructive to our liver and may cause liver can-
cer (Peyre et al. 2014). This work proposes a
novel reflective metal grating integrated micro-
fluidic sensor to detect carbendazim, using
affordable and effective laser surface microma-
chining technology to achieve the fabrication of
metal grating with a high sensitivity of up to
8.773 GHz/mg L
1. Compared with the traditional
terahertz transmission sensor, the sensitivity is
improved about eight times, mainly because the
light-matter interaction in the microfluidic chan-
nel is greatly enhanced. Moreover, the fabricated
sensor is used to detect carbendazim in orange.
Materials and methods
Experimental method design
System design
This experiment used the THz-TDS system as
shown in Figure 1(a). The system is composed of
five parts, similar to the one described by Tong
et al. (2020). Both adopt the commercial
TAS7400TS system produced by Advantest com-
pany of Japan. The difference lies in our study
uses transmission and reflection modules. The
terahertz beam focusing spot diameter on the
sample is 1–2 mm approximately. To reduce the
system error caused by noise in the experimental
results, the result of each measurement is the
average value after 128 scans.
 FOOD ADDITIVES & CONTAMINANTS: PART A 1557

Figure 2. (a) Process flow including (1) nanosecond laser micromachining on aluminum foil to fabricate square hole arrays, (2)
metal grating glued on polyimide film with resin glue, (3) nanosecond laser micromachining on aluminum plate to make micro-
flow channel, (4) laser drilling to make the inlet and outlet and (5) package. (b) Schematic of nanosecond laser micromachining
system and (c) micrograph of the metal hole array. Photo images of (d) transmission-type metal grating sensor and (e) reflection-
type metal grating sensor.

Materials and instrument setups as a signal of carbendazim concentration (Figure

Carbendazim powder (99% purity) and acetone
(99% purity) were purchased from Aladdin
Company. An appropriate amount of carbenda-
zim powder was dissolved in acetone, and five
sample solutions of carbendazim with different
concentrations (0 mg/L, 0.5 mg/L, 1 mg/L, 5 mg/L,
10 mg/L) were prepared. We used a magnetic
stirrer to ensure uniform mixing. During the
sample preparation process, all centrifuge tubes
were cleaned with distilled water first, and at
room temperature in the drying oven drying, to
remove impurities such as dust. All data collec-
tion was performed in a nitrogen purification
container at room temperature (about 22  C) and
a relative humidity of less than 5%. Figure 1(b)
shows the transmission mode of the experiment,
in which carbendazim solutions of different con-
centrations of 20 lL were dropped on the surface
of the metal grating sensor. The terahertz wave
penetrated the samples with vertical incidence,
and the shift of the transmission line was treated
as a signal of carbendazim concentration (Figure
1(c)). Figure 1(d) showed the reflection mode of
the experiment, in which carbendazim solutions
of different concentrations were introduced into
the microfluidic channel of the sensor. The tera-
hertz wave contacted the sample in an obliquely,
and the shift of the reflection line was regarded
1(e)). In the experiment, we collected the spec-
trum of each concentration at the same position
of the sample, after multiple measurements and
considered the mean of the repeated spectra as a
single spectrum for each concentration.
Fabrication of metal grating sensor
In this paper, transmissive and reflective metal
grating sensors were produced respectively. The
process flow was shown in Figure 2(a). The
transmissive sensor was composed of a metal
microstructure and a 50 lm polyimide film. The
reflective sensor was composed of a cover layer
and a substrate, in which the cover layer was a
transmissive sensor and the substrate was an alu-
minum plate with grooves, the grooves depth to
35 ± 3 lm and 2 mm  2 mm in size. At the bot-
tom of the groove, there were two holes with a
diameter of 1 mm, which were mainly used for
liquid input and output, and the micro-flow
channel, h  15 ± 3 lm.
We adopted nanosecond laser surface micro-
machining technology to fabricate the metal
square hole array required for the experiment on
the 20 lm aluminum foil. Figure 2(b) shows the
schematic diagram of nanosecond laser microma-
chining. The laser used in this experiment was an
1558 Y. TONG ET AL.
IPG-HP-100 pulsed fiber laser produced by IPG
Company. Its laser power can be adjusted from
0 W to 100 W, the wavelength is 1064 nm, the
pulse width is approximately 100 ns, and the
focus spot diameter is 50 lm. The maximum area
that can be scanned is 100 mm  100 mm. The
two-dimensional mobile platform was used to
control the laser focal length and the position of
the sample material to ensure that the material
surface was in the focal position. In this experi-
ment, the square side length a  80 lm and the
period p  140 lm were set. The production
effect is shown in Figure 2(c), in which the total
size of the metal grating is 8 mm  8 mm. The
transmissive and reflective sensors are shown in
Figure 2(d,e), these two devices are manufactured
according to the steps described in Figure 2(a).
The metal microstructure was bonded with the
polyimide film through epoxy resin glue. The
reflective sensor was achieved by using water-
proof tape to assemble the cover layer and the
substrate together.
Sample collection
For the presented study, oranges were chosen to
verify whether this method is feasible for the
determination of carbendazim in actual agricul-
tural products, and the experimental samples was
from the local Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). Because of the complex composition of
actual samples, simple processing was required
before spectral detection. Firstly, chopped and
homogenized the orange sample to obtain a pasty
sample. Then, placed a 20 g paste sample in a
centrifuge tube and diluted it with 20 mL acetone.
The mixture was centrifuged at 5000 rpm for
10 min to extract the supernatant.
Results and discussion
Mechanism of metal grating sensor
This work used the finite-difference-time-domain
method in CST Microwave Studio software to
numerically simulate the designed metal grating
sensor. In the simulation, the electrical conduct-
ivity of the aluminum material was set to a lossy
metal with r ¼ 3.56  10
7 S/m, the metal grating
substrate was selected as low-loss polyimide.
Since the designed sensor was a metal grating
structure, the incident terahertz wave excited
SPPs in the metal microstructure (Wang et al.
2018). To study the variation of the performance
of metal grating under different structural param-
eters, numerical simulation was used to demon-
strate the dependence of transmission spectrum
on the period p and the side
length 2a.
Transmission was defined as T ¼ Esamp =Eref ,
where Esamp and Eref were frequency-domain
amplitudes of the samples and reference signals,
respectively. Under the condition that the side
length of the square was 80 lm, the period
increased from 130 lm to 170 lm, and the trans-
mission peak was red-shifted and the bandwidth
was narrowed (Figure 3(a)). Under the condition
of a period of 140 lm, the side length of the
square hole was increased from 60 lm to 100 lm,
the transmission peak also had red-shifted and
the band width became wider (Figure 3(b)). It
shows that the transmission spectrum characteris-
tics of the metal hole array can be modulated by
changing the size of the structural unit. In this
experiment, we selected a whole array of nar-
rower bandwidth and higher transmittance (a 
80 lm, p  140 lm).
In order to characterize the spectral response
of the metal grating, media with different relative
permittivity er were loaded on the surface of the
metal grating and the microfluidic channel dur-
ing simulation. The corresponding transmission
and reflection spectra are shown in Figure 3(c,d),
respectively. As the permittivity of the analyte
increases from 1 to 2.8, the transmission peak
shifts to low frequencies in both transmission
and reflection modes. According to the sensor
pffiffiffiffi
sensitivity S ¼ Df =D er , the relationship
between the resonant frequency of the sensor and
the dielectric constant of the medium was fitted,
with the results shown in Figure 3(e,f). The the-
oretical sensitivities of the sensor in transmission
mode and reflection mode are 641.2 GHz/RIU
and 1178.9 GHz/RIU, respectively, which are
excellent sensing performances. Figure 4(a) shows
the electric field distribution of the metal grating
at the resonance frequency of 1.815 THz when
the electric field of the incident terahertz wave
was along the x-axis. The strong electric field was
distributed on the edge of the square hole,
 FOOD ADDITIVES & CONTAMINANTS: PART A 1559

Figure 3. The dependences of transmission spectrum on (a) the period p and (b) the side length a of the square, (c) transmission
spectra by transmission method and (d) reflection spectra by reflection method of samples with different permittivity, fit diagram
of the frequency shift of the resonance peak and the permittivity of the sensor e in transmission mode and f reflection mode.

Figure 4. (a) Simulated electric field distributionat the resonant frequency for the metal grating, the electric field distribution per-
pendicular to the metal grating by (b) transmission method and (c) reflection method.

indicating that the electric field distribution in z-direction. The transmissive electric field was
this area is highly confined. Figure 4(b,c) show mainly concentrated above the hole, which was
the electric field distribution of the transmissive relatively divergent and had a smaller overlap
and reflective metal grating sensors in the area with the analyte (white dotted line), resulting
1560 Y. TONG ET AL.
in lower sensitivity. In contrast, the higher sensi-
tivity of the reflective sensor benefited from the
new integration of metal grating and microflui-
dic, where the cavity resonance and the analyte
(white dashed line) had the greatest overlap,
which resulted in a greater resonance frequency
shift (Hu et al. 2016).
Detect carbendazim by transmission method
Figure 5(a) shows the measured and simulated
transmission spectra of the metal grating. The
highest transmission peak frequency of the meas-
ured transmission spectrum was 1.791 THz, while
the simulated highest transmission peak fre-
quency was 1.818 THz. Due to problems such as
the external environment and the precision of the
square hole production, the measured transmis-
sion peak presented a narrower band width than
the simulated transmission peak. As mentioned
above, the designed metal grating was very sensi-
tive to the dielectric constant of the medium.
When the dielectric constant of the solution
around the metal grating changed, the position of
the resonance peak also changed. In order to
investigate the sensitivity of the transmissive and
reflective sensors, we compared the experimental
results of transmissive and reflective sensors.
Figure 5(b) shows the transmission spectra of
carbendazim solutions with different concentra-
tions, and the transmission peaks has shifted sig-
nificantly. In the concentration range of 0 mg/L
to 10 mg/L, the transmission peak redshifted (to a
longer wavelength) as the concentration
increased, which was similar to the simulation
results. When the concentration of carbendazim
in the sample changed from 0 mg/L to 10 mg/L,
the peak position of the resonance peak shifted
from 1.789 THz to 1.772 THz.
For further study, Figure 5(c) shows the rela-
tionship between the transmission peak frequency
and carbendazim concentration. The curve fitting
was y ¼ 0.0002x2 – 0.0034x þ 1.7872, R2 ¼ 0.94.
As the increase of carbendazim concentration,
the frequency shift value increased, and the max-
imum frequency shift value of the resonance
peak was 13.4 GHz, and the corresponding con-
centration changed from 5 mg/L to 10 mg/L. On
the other hand, the transmission peak frequency
at the first two concentrations only slightly red-
shifted, while the transmission peak frequency
changed most drastically at the last three higher
concentrations, from 1.781 THz at 1 mg/L to
1.772 THz at 10 mg/L. This is because the carben-
dazim concentration has a positive correlation
with its refractive index (Ye et al. 2021). When
the refractive index of the analyte increases, the
effective refractive index of the gap plasma
decreases, and the resonance frequency decreases
resulting in a redshift. As the concentration of
the analyte increases, the larger the frequency
shift of transmission peak. The results show that
the combination of metal grating and THz-TDS
can detect trace amounts of carbendazim.
Detection of carbendazim by the
reflection method
Figure 5(d) shows the reflection spectra of differ-
ent concentrations of carbendazim solutions.
When the concentration of carbendazim in the
microfluidic channel gradually changed from
0 mg/L to 10 mg/L, the two resonant peaks of the
sensor could be observed to be redshifted simul-
taneously, and the experimental results were in
good agreement with the simulation results. The
frequency of the two resonance peaks in the
reflection spectrum was further studied with
the change of carbendazim concentration in the
microfluidic channel, and the results are shown
in Figure 5(e), the curve fitting of the resonant
peak at low frequency was y ¼ 0.0009x2 –
0.0155x þ 1.0699, R2 ¼ 0.96; the curve fitting of
the resonant peak at high frequency was
y ¼ 0.0011x2 – 0.0184x þ 1.5183, R2 ¼ 0.93. As
the concentration of carbendazim increased, the
frequency shift values of the two resonance peaks
also increased. The maximum frequency shift of
the resonance peak at low frequency was
30.5 GHz, and the corresponding concentration
changed from 0.5 mg/L to 1 mg/L. At the same
time, the resonance peak at high frequency also
got the maximum frequency shift in this concen-
tration range, reaching 26.7 GHz. As the concen-
tration gradually increased from 0 mg/L to
10 mg/L, the resonance peak at low frequency
shifted by 70.6 GHz and the resonance peak at
high frequency shifted by 87.7 GHz, which
 FOOD ADDITIVES & CONTAMINANTS: PART A 1561

Figure 5. Spectra and sensitivity of transmission and reflection sensors. (a) Transmission spectrum of metal grating, (b) transmis-
sion spectra of carbendazim solutions of different concentrations, (c) the variation of resonance frequency of transmission peak
with the concentration of carbendazim, (d) reflectance spectra of carbendazim solutions of different concentrations, (e) the vari-
ation of the resonance frequencies of each reflection peak with the concentration of carbendazim and (f) sensitivity of each reson-
ance peak of the sensor.

showed the resonance peak frequency shift at
high frequency was large. As can be seen from
Figure 5(c,e), when the concentration increased
from 0 to 0.5 mg/L, the transmission peak shifted
in frequency, so the microfluidic sensor could
detect carbendazim solutions with concentrations
as low as 0.5 mg/L.
We calculated the sensitivity corresponding to
the resonance peak of each sensor, and the result
is shown in Figure 5(f). The sensitivity of the
designed transmissive metal grating sensor was
1.717 GHz/mg L
1 (the resonance peak shift in
unit concentration), the sensitivity at the low fre-
quency of the reflective metal grating sensor
reached 7.057 GHz/mg L
1 and the sensitivity at
the high frequency reached 8.773 GHz/mg L
1.
Therefore, the reflective sensor had higher sensi-
tivity than the transmissive sensor, and when
used in the detection of carbendazim, a more
obvious resonance peak frequency shift could
be observed.
Real sample analysis
Orange samples from the local FDA were ana-
lyzed by LC-MS, and the carbendazim
concentrations in Orange A, Orange B and
Orange C were found to be 2.382 ± 0.003,
2.121 ± 0.003 and 2.249 ± 0.003 mg/kg. The
National standard GB 26130-2010 of the People’s
Republic of China stipulates that the maximum
residue limit of carbendazim in oranges is 5 mg/
kg. Next the concentration of carbendazim in
oranges was determined by the metal grating sen-
sors. The results are summarized in Table 1. The
carbendazim concentration of Orange A deter-
mined using the transmissive sensor was
2.242 ± 0.032 mg/kg, with a relative error of 5.8%.
The carbendazim determined at low and high fre-
quency using the reflective sensor was
2.256 ± 0.028 mg/kg and 2.264 ± 0.027 mg/kg, and
the relative errors were 5.2% and 4.9%, respect-
ively. Compared with Orange B and Orange C,
the relative error was smaller. The relative error
for each orange sample in the transmissive sensor
was generally greater than that of the reflective
sensor, and the relative error detected by the
high frequency in the reflective sensor was the
smallest, the sensitivity was the highest. The
experimental results showed that the metal gra-
ting reflective sensor had high accuracy for the
1562 Y. TONG ET AL.

Table 1. Results of determination of carbendazim in three Orange samples.

Orange A (n ¼ 5) Orange B (n ¼ 5) Orange C (n ¼ 5)
HPLC-MS 2.382 ± 0.003 2.121 ± 0.003 2.249 ± 0.003
concentration (mg/kg)
Sensor method TX Refl. TX Refl. TX Refl.
Resonance peak (THz) 1.7806 1.0395 1.4823 1.7812 1.0424 1.4857 1.7809 1.0409 1.4840
Concentration (mg/kg) 2.243 ± 0.032 2.257 ± 0.028 2.264 ± 0.027 1.995 ± 0.032 2.009 ± 0.029 2.013 ± 0.028 2.117 ± 0.031 2.131 ± 0.028 2.138 ± 0.027
Relative error 5.8% 5.2% 4.9% 5.9% 5.3% 5.1% 5.9% 5.2% 4.9%

Table 2 Matrix effect of carbendazim in orange matrix.

Concentration (mg/kg) a (mg/kg) (n ¼ 5) b (mg/kg) (n ¼ 5) ME± SD (%) (n ¼ 5)
1.0 1.036 0.993 104.3 ± 4.79
1.5 1.421 1.354 104.9 ± 3.18
2.0 1.897 1.689 112.3 ± 9.51
2.5 2.469 2.431 101.6 ± 6.72

determination of carbendazim. Therefore, this
method was feasible to determine the carbenda-
zim in samples of fruit such as oranges.
Matrix effect evaluation
The experimental samples were divided into
orange matrix group (B) and acetone solvent
group (A). The oranges without carbendazim
were determined as the experimental samples of
Group B, and the carbendazim powder was
added to acetone and the orange base solution to
prepare two groups of 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 mg/kg
samples to be tested. Each analysis was repeated
five times. The relative ratio method was used to
evaluate the matrix effect (ME) with the formula
below
MEð%Þ ¼ a=b  100
Where a and b are the response values of car-
bendazim in orange matrix and acetone solvent.
The measurement results are shown in
Table 2. It can be seen that the matrix effect
(ME, %) at the measured carbendazim concentra-
tion level was between 104.3% and 112.3%, which
is a weak enhancement matrix effect, and the
matrix effect is not obvious. Therefore, the tera-
hertz microfluidic sensor used to detect the con-
tent of carbendazim in oranges has good
accuracy and reliability.
domain was designed. The highly confined elec-
tromagnetic field in the microfluidic channel can
significantly enhance the interaction between the
analyte and the terahertz wave and improve the
sensitivity of terahertz detection. The square hole
array metal grating used in the experiment was
fabricated by nanosecond laser micromachining
technology, which has the advantages of simple
processing, low cost and has good sensitivity to
the surrounding sample environment. The results
show that with an increase in concentration of
carbendazim, the peak positions of the two res-
onance peaks in the reflection spectrum gradually
redshift. The sensitivity of the peak at low fre-
quency and high frequency reaches 7.057 GHz/
mgL
1 and 8.773 GHz/mgL
1 respectively.
Compared with the traditional terahertz transmis-
sive sensor, the sensitivity is increased by about
eight times. The method was applied to the
determination of carbendazim in oranges, and
the relative error was less than 5.3%. It has been
shown that the metal grating integrated micro-
fluidic sensor combined with terahertz time-
domain spectroscopy technology can improve the
sensitivity of sample detection. It can also achieve
rapid detection and analysis at trace levels, which
has potentially broad application in the research
fields of trace analysis, biosensors and
food safety.

Conclusions
In summary, a novel metal grating integrated
microfluidic sensor in the terahertz frequency
Disclosure statement
TThe authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge the National Natural
Science Foundation of China [51405200 and 51775253], Six
Talent Summit Innovation Team Projects in Jiangsu
Province [TD-KTHY-005], the China Post-Doctoral Science
Foundation Project [2015M580395], the Open Foundation
of National Research Center of Pumps [NRCP201606], the
Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province
[BK20170559] and the Key Project of Industry Foresight
and Common Key Technologies of Jiangsu province
[BE2017001-2] .
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