Surfactant functionalisation of magnetic nanoparticles: A greener method for parabens determination in water samples by using magnetic solid phase extraction

Abstract

The present work highlights a new strategy through funtionalisation of Fe3O4 nanoparticles with green, effective and highly water soluble surfactant (DC193C) (MNP@DC193C) as an efficient adsorbent for the determination of parabens in water samples by using magnetic solid phase extraction (MSPE) technique. The newly prepared MNP@DC193C was analysed by using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffractometer (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) analysis. The obtained results confirmed that surfactant DC193C was successfully grafted onto Fe3O4 nanoparticles surface. The proposed MNP@DC193C-MSPE method was effectively applied for the selected paraben extractions (methyl, ethyl, propyl and benzyl parabens) from water samples prior to HPLC-UV analysis. Several parameters, such as the effect of pH, sample volume, sorbent mass, types of desorption solvent, volume of desorption solvent, desorption and extraction time of the sample matrix were optimised to obtain the optimum conditions for the paraben extractions. The proposed MNP@DC193C-MSPE method provided low detection limit (0.0024–0.0063 μg mL−1), good linearity of the detection method with correlation coefficients (R2) between 0.995 and 0.998 and satisfactory reproducibility with relative standard deviations (RSDs) of less than 10.1%. Under optimised conditions, the newly synthesised MNP@DC193C was successfully applied to water samples from the environment. This newly developed method has successfully enriched selected parabens from these complex matrices because good recoveries were obtained in the range of 86.0–118.0% with satisfactory RSD % (0.41–15.9%). This study demonstrated that MNP@DC193C was a promising MSPE adsorbent for the preconcentration of parabens from environmental samples.