Histamine, which is a naturally occurring chemical in seafood, is known to cause undesirable inflammatory response when consumed in large amounts. Histamine is produced in unsafe amounts in colored seafood when improperly stored for just a few hours. Food and health regulatory bodies across the world have guidelines limiting the amount of histamine in fresh as well as processed seafood. Conventional histamine detection is performed in testing labs, which is a slow process and results in bottlenecks in the seafood supply-chain system. A system to rapidly detect the seafood histamine levels on site is very desirable for seafood suppliers. Herein, we describe an impedance-based histamine detection sensor built on a flexible substrate that can detect histamine in the range of 100-500 ppm. Moreover, our sensor discriminates histamine in the presence of DL-histidine and other biogenic amines, with the selectivity provided by molecular imprinting technology. As a proof of concept, a smartphone controlled, portable semi-quantitative histamine sensing device was fabricated that gave out reliable testing results for histamine in different test solutions as well as for real seafood. We believe this technology can be extended towards determination of other food contaminants in aqueous solutions.

组胺是海鲜中天然存在的化学物质，大量食用时会引起不良的炎症反应。如果不正确地存储仅几个小时，则有色海鲜中会产生不安全量的组胺。世界各地的食品和健康监管机构都制定了限制新鲜和加工海鲜中组胺含量的指南。传统的组胺检测是在测试实验室中进行的，这是一个缓慢的过程，并导致海鲜供应链系统出现瓶颈。对于海鲜供应商而言，非常需要一种能够在现场快速检测海鲜组胺水平的系统。本文中，我们描述了一种基于阻抗的组胺检测传感器，该传感器构建在可检测100-500 ppm范围内的组胺的柔性基板上。此外，我们的传感器在存在DL-组氨酸和其他生物胺的情况下，通过分子印迹技术提供了选择性来区分组胺。作为概念的证明，制造了一种由智能手机控制的便携式半定量组胺感测设备，该设备在不同的测试溶液以及真实的海鲜中均给出了可靠的组胺测试结果。我们相信这项技术可以扩展到测定水溶液中其他食品污染物的方法。