Preparation of metal–organic framework @molecularly imprinted polymers for extracting strobilurin fungicides from agricultural products

Abstract

The core–shell metal–organic framework coated with molecularly imprinted polymers (ZIF-8@MIPs) were successfully synthesized by surface imprinting technique, and applied as adsorbents for solid-phase extraction of strobilurin fungicides. The obtained hybrid complex was characterized in detail, and their adsorbing and recognition performance were evaluated. The results showed that ZIF-8@MIPs presented typically core–shell structure with MIP shell (about 20 nm), and exhibited larger adsorption capacity (102.5 mg g−1) and fast adsorption ability (only 5 min). Under the optimized conditions, a sensitive, efficient and reliable method for determining six strobilurin fungicides in different agricultural products based on ZIF-8@MIPs coupling with high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry was established. This method showed good linearity with correlation coefficients higher than 0.9990. With spiked at three different concentration levels in agricultural products (apple, pear, banana, Chinese cabbage, cabbage, cucumber), the good recoveries (83.5–129.0%) with relative standard deviations from 0.5 to 10.2% were obtained. The limit of detections and the limit of quantifications were 0.01–1.12 ng g−1 and 0.03–3.73 ng g−1, respectively. Those results demonstrated good potential application of ZIF-8@MIPs for enriching and separating trace strobilurin fungicides in agricultural samples.