One-Pot Sustainable Synthesis of Ce₂S₃/Gum Arabic Carbon Flower Nanocomposites for the Detection of Insecticide Imidacloprid

Investigating ecofriendly sustainable materials with excellent electrocatalytic activity is a pivotal approach for the analysis field. The present work reports on the preparation of novel three-dimensional (3D) cerium sulfide with gum arabic carbon flowers (Ce₂S₃/GACFs) via the hydrothermal method by using l-cysteine as a sulfur source, binding, and reducing agents. The intensive characterization techniques were utilized to corroborate the structural moiety, morphology, and size of Ce₂S₃/GACFs. The obtained 3D Ce₂S₃/GACF construction has excellent active sites, and hence it prevents the accumulation of carbon flowers. Furthermore, the obtained Ce₂S₃/GACF/glassy carbon electrode (GCE) could afford a very high electrocatalytic activity, possessing an exceedingly low detection limit of 32 nM, the high sensitivity of 2.65 μA μM^–1 cm^–2, good repeatability, and high stability for the detection of insecticide imidacloprid (IMC). The Ce₂S₃/GACF/GCE also provides a wide linear range of 0.05–1266 μM toward IMC detection. The excellent recovery results (90–99.3%) are achieved by using various spiked real food samples at Ce₂S₃/GACF/GCE. Confidently, this work gives up novel construction of 3D metal–carbon-based bioderived material for its catalytic application in the future.