A combination of computational-experimental study on metal-organic frameworks MIL-53(Al) as sorbent for simultaneous determination of estrogens and glucocorticoids in water and urine samples by dispersive micro-solid-phase extraction coupled to UPLC-MS/MS.

In this work, computational and experimental methods were used to study the adsorption of estrogens and glucocorticoids on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Computer-aided molecular simulation was applied to predict the adsorption of eight analytes on four MOFs (MIL-101(Cr), MIL-100(Fe), MIL-53(Al), and UiO-66(Zr)) by examining molecular interactions and calculating free binding energies. Subsequently, the four water-stable MOFs were synthesized and evaluated as adsorbents for the target hormones in aqueous solution. As the MOF exhibiting the highest adsorption capacity in both computations and experiments, MIL-53(Al) was chosen as a sorbent to develop a dispersive micro-solid-phase extraction procedure coupled to ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry for simultaneous determination of the target analytes in water and human urine samples. Experimental parameters affecting the extraction recoveries, including pH, ionic strength, MIL-53(Al) amount, extraction time, desorption time, and desorption solvent, were optimized. The optimized method provided a linear range of 0.005025-368.6μg/L with good correlation coefficients (0.9982 ≤ r ≤ 0.9992), and limits of detection (S/N = 3) and quantification (S/N = 10) of 0.0015-1.0μg/L and 0.005-1.8μg/L, respectively. The analyte recoveries were in the range of 80.6-98.4% in water samples and 88.4-93.2% in urine samples. Furthermore, MIL-53(Al) showed good stability over 10 extraction cycles (RSD < 10.0%). Good agreement between experimental measurements and computational results showed the potential of this approach for elucidating adsorption mechanisms and predicating extraction efficiencies for MOFs and targets, providing new directions for the development and utilization of MOFs.