Water pollution, as the remarkable environmental remediation issue, is a today worldwide 22 concern. Cadmium ion (Cd2+) as a hazardous water pollutant is seriously detrimental to human 23 health, food safety, and ecological areas. Hence, we successfully designed a simple detection 24 array for monitoring of ultra-low levels of Cd2+ ion by combining the advantages of aptamer 25 as a high sensitive and selective sensing probe and zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) 26 as a superior fluorescence quenching inducer. To have a portable and on-site detection assay, 27 the aptamer biosensing array (aptasensor) was designed by using a paper-supported substrate. 28 The basis of the designed paper-supported aptasensor was the specific complexation of Cd2+ 29 with the aptamer strand, adsorption of fluorescein-labeled complementary (FAM-CP) strand 30 on the ZIF-8 surface, and fluorescence quenching of FAM molecule after the leakage of the 31 injected target solution on the sample zone of the paper substrate to the detection part. A linear 32 relationship was obtained between the Mean Gray Value index, as a criterion for the 33 fluorescence quenching, and the Cd2+ concentration in the range of 0.1-120 pM with a detection 34 limit of 0.076 pM. The aptasensor could detect Cd2+ in the diverse real sample, including tap 35 water, milk, coffee, and human blood serum.

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