Detection of chlorpyrifos based on molecular imprinting with a conducting polythiophene copolymer loaded on multi-walled carbon nanotubes

•A molecularly imprinted conducting polymer was developed for the detection of Chlorpyrifos.•Polythiophenes covalently grown on the surface of Multiwalled carbon nanotubes as imprinting substrate.•Low limit of detection (LOD) of 4.0 × 10-12 M was obtained. Molecular imprinting technique (MIT) with electrochemical sensing provides an attractive tool for the fabrication of sensors. Incorporation of conducting copolymer and surface imprinting strategies in the sensing device improves the conducting properties and poor template accessibility, slow binding kinetics at the same time. Here, this technique was employed with conducting polymers with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) to build an electrochemical sensor for detecting Chlorpyrifos (CPF) in vegetable sample solutions. In this work, we aimed at synthesizing a copolymer of 3-thiophene acetic acid and 3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene on the surface of MWCNT. We further constructed a polymer drop-casted glassy carbon electrode sensor for ultrasensitive detection CPF. Under optimal conditions, the sensor exhibited a very low limit of detection (LOD) of 4.0 × 10-12 M for CPF. Due to the excellent repeatability and reusability of the materials, this study and findings have potential applications in the monitoring of pesticides from vegetable samples.