Magnetic TiC MXene Nanosheets Prepared for Enrichment of Phosphopeptides.

MXenes have received lots of attention since discovered and have been applied in various fields. In this work, TiC-FeO composites with exposed non-modified TiC MXene nanosheets were designed and prepared by an in situ growth strategy and then applied in the enrichment of phosphopeptides. The two-dimensional composites could interact with the phosphopeptides through a metal oxide affinity chromatography mechanism provided by Ti-O and Fe-O bonds and a hydrophilic interaction chromatography mechanism by surface hydroxyl groups. This magnetic nanomaterial with a specific surface area of 66.1 m·g had high sensitivity to phosphopeptides (0.5 nmol·L) and high selectivity (1:1000 of the molar ratio of β-casein to bovine serum albumin). Non-fat milk was adopted as a real sample to preliminarily examine the applicability of the TiC-FeO-based protocol. Subsequently, Qingkailing injection, a kind of traditional Chinese medicine injection, was introduced to further explore the suitability of the nanocomposites for phosphopeptide enrichment from more complex matrices and satisfactory results were obtained.