A magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer based on an eco-friendly deep eutectic solvent for the selective recognition of dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane and its degradation products in fruits and vegetables

Abstract

A new magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer was successfully synthesized using a ternary deep eutectic solvent derived from caffeic acid-choline chloride-formic acid as a functional monomer, thymol-menthol deep eutectic solvent as a template, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as a cross-linker, potassium peroxodisulfate as an initiator, and aqueous ethanol solution (90% (v/v)) as a porogen. The synthesized material was characterized and applied for magnetic solid-phase extraction of dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane and its degradation products. Optimization of the extraction condition was carried out using the central composite design and response surface methodology. The good analytical performance of magnetic solid phase extraction/gas chromatography‒mass spectrometry using the proposed adsorbent shows a wide linear range of 0.07–500 ng g−1 with R2 greater than 0.992. Low detection limits and quantitation limits were observed in the ranges of 0.01–2.00 ng g−1 and 0.07–2.50 ng g−1, respectively. The precisions shown in terms of relative standard deviations were lower than 7.0% for intraday (n=5) and 8.6% for interday (n=5 × 3) experiments. The proposed method was applied for preconcentration and determination of dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane and its degradation products in fruit and vegetable samples. The satisfactory recoveries of the real samples at three spiked concentrations were obtained in the range of 79.1%–110.9% with RSDs lower than 7.5%. The findings highlight the importance of developing efficient sorbents for the enrichment of persistent organic pollutants in food matrices.