Detection of Geraniol in Palmarosa Essential oil using Silicone Sealant as molecularly imprinted polymer in a QCM sensor

Abstract

Geraniol is a commercially significant terpene alcohol found in the essential oils of a variety of aromatic plants. It is one of the most important molecules in the flavor and fragrance industries, and a common ingredient in consumer products. In order to detect geraniol in real samples, silicone sealant, a readily available commercial product, was used as the polymer to prepare a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) based quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor and is presented in this paper. Optimum ratio of sealant was dissolved in dichloromethane and then geraniol was added as the template molecule to synthesize the coating material of the sensor.  The surface of the QCM with silver electrode was modified using the synthesized MIP solution by the drop coating method. The developed sensor showed reasonably good sensitivity and selectivity to geraniol and was employed to detect the concentration of geraniol at ppm level in different palmarosa essential oil samples. Good correlation was obtained with the responses from gas chromatography.