A portable kit for rapid detection of bromadiolone in human blood and urine via surface-enhanced raman scattering coupled with salt-induced liquid-liquid phase separation

Bromadiolone is the most frequently detected anticoagulant rodenticide in human biofluids, resulting in increased cases of poisoning. Here, we present a portable kit that could realize rapid fingerprint detection of DQ in human biofluids. This strategy was based on surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and salt-induced liquid-liquid phase separation (SILLPS) using a gold/silver core-shell nanoparticle (Au@Ag NPs) substrate. The kit included a portable Raman spectrometer and five tubes that contained Au@Ag NPs colloid, KI solution, saturated NaCl solution, acetonitrile, and Mg(NO3)2 solution. This strategy did not require pretreatment for urine samples. For blood samples, a 2-min SILLPS method was proposed with satisfactory recovery, providing unique insights into efficient pretreatment of complex biomatrix. The detection limits for urine and blood were calculated to be 3.21 ppb and 6.86 ppb, respectively. A clear trend could be observed between signal intensity and logarithmic concentration of bromadiolone ranging from 0 to 2 ppm with high reproducibility. Such a portable kit based on SILLPS-SERS can rapidly provide fingerprint information of poison. This simple-yet-practical “Pretreat & Detect” SERS kit may open up new opportunities for point-of-care detection of poisons and has great potential as a tool in field applications. [Display omitted] •Simple-yet-practical “Pretreat & Detect” SERS kit for rapid detection of bromadiolone in urine and blood.•Portable, easy to operate kit suitable for point-of-care testing.•Salt-induced liquid-liquid separation enables rapid pretreatment of blood.•Quantitative detection of bromadiolone concentrations in the range, 10 ppb to 2 ppm.