Preparation and application of magnetic molecular imprinted polymers for extraction of cephalexin from pork and milk samples

Abstract

A highly selective and effective method was successfully developed using magnetic molecular imprinted polymers (MMIPs) as solid-phase extraction (SPE) coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detector (HPLC-UV) to rapidly determine cephalexin (CFX) in complex animal-derived food. MMIPs were creatively synthesized via suspension polymerization using Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles as supporter, CFX as template, acrylamide (AM) as functional monomer, and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as cross-linker. The MMIPs were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). The binding process fitted well with pseudo-second-order model with good selectivity. Scatchard plot analysis suggested that MMIPs have two types of binding sites with the Qmax of 24.18 mg g−1 and 40.25 mg g−1, respectively. And Langmuir model proved that the recognition sites were uniformly distributed in a monolayer on the surface of MMIPs. The methodological assessment showed good applicability of MMIPs with excellent recovery (85.5%–94.0%), precision (1.2%–2.4%), and stability (intra-day 1.3%–3.6%; inter-day 2.6%–4.3%) in determining CFX content. In addition, the linearity of the calibration curve was good in the range of 0.02–5.00 mg L−1, with a sensitive detection limit of 5.00 μg kg−1. The results above suggest that the obtained MMIPs exert good performance for separation of CFX in animal-derived food, and the proposed method is suitable for the reliable determination of CFX in complex samples.