Selective determination of sulfonamides from environmental water based on magnetic surface molecularly imprinting technology.

In the study, a simple and selective method based on magnetic separation technology is presented for the extraction of sulfonamides (SAs) from environmental water, followed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. In this method, magnetic surface molecularly imprinted polymers (FeO@SiO@MIPs) with super-paramagnetic property and high selectivity toward SAs were developed as magnetic adsorbents. The FeO@SiO@MIPs were then applied to the selective extraction of SAs from environmental water. The extraction and enrichment were accomplished simultaneously in a single step by simply stirring the mixture of adsorbents and water samples. The FeO@SiO@MIPs were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry, and vibrating sample magnetometry. The adsorption thermodynamics and kinetics were employed to study the adsorption mechanism of the FeO@SiO@MIPs. And the matrix effect of the method was evaluated. Calibration curves obtained by analyzing matrix-matched standards show excellent linear relationship (R = 0.9994-0.9999) in the concentration range of 10-1000 ng L, and the limits of detection are in the range of 1.4-2.8 ng L. The relative standard deviations of intra- and inter-day obtained are in the range of 2.8 to 7.8 and 3.1 to 7.9%, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied to determine SAs in six environmental water samples, and SAs were detectable in four of them with the concentration from 10.5 to 120.2 ng L.