Deltamethrin pesticides can cause inflammation, nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity as well as affect the activity of antioxidant enzymes in tissues. As a result of this concern, there is a rising focus on the development of fast and reliable pesticide residue testing to minimise potential risks to humans. The goal of this study is to use Au-Ag colloid nanoparticles as liquid surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to improve the Raman signal in the detection of deltamethrin pesticide in a brewed tea. The liquid SERS system is fascinating to study due to its ease of use and its unlikeliness to cause several phenomena, such as photo-bleaching, combustion, sublimation and even photo-catalysis, which can interfere with the Raman signal, as shown in the SERS substrate. Our liquid SERS system is simpler than previous liquid SERS systems that have been reported. We performed the detection of pesticide analyte directly on brewed tea, without diluting it with ethanol or centrifuging it. Femtosecond laser-induced photo-reduction was employed to synthesise the liquid SERS of Au, Au-Ag, and Ag colloidal nanoparticles. The SERS was utilised to detect deltamethrin pesticide in brewed tea. The result showed that liquid SERS-based Ag NPs significantly enhance the Raman signal of pesticides compared with liquid SERS-based Au NPs and Au-Ag Nanoalloys. The maximum residue limits (MRLs) in tea in Indonesia are set at 10 ppm. Therefore, this method was also utilised to detect and improve, to 0.01 ppm, the deltamethrin pesticide Limit of Detection (LOD).

The wide application of gold nanoparticles has attracted much attention to the development of research in gold nanoparticles. In this study, the gold nanoparticles were prepared by chemical reduction method using potassium tetrachloroaurate as the gold source and sodium borohydride as reducer agent. The formation of gold nanoparticles was confirmed by surface plasmon spectra in ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy at wavelength 507 nm. The capping process of gold nanoparticles was studied using two different charges of amino acids. The asparagine had used as uncharge amino acid and lysine as a positive charge amino acid. The redshift in surface plasmon spectra showed the aggregation of the gold nanoparticles after being capped with amino acids that indicates the surface modification. The amine and carboxylate group was present on the gold nanoparticle surface after being capped with amino acids. The zeta potential results indicate the lysine capped gold nanoparticles have slightly higher stability than the asparagine capped gold nanoparticles. These stability and surface modification of gold nanoparticles are expected to increase their utilization on biological and medical applications.