Magnetic dummy-template molecularly imprinted polymers based on multi-walled carbon nanotubes for simultaneous selective extraction and analysis of phenoxy carboxylic acid herbicides in cereals

A novel of magnetic dummy-template molecularly imprinted polymers (mag-MWCNTs-DMIPs) were prepared by surface molecular imprinting technique. The structure of polymers were characterized and the binding properties were assessed by adsorption experiments. The synthetic mag-MWCNTs-DMIPs exhibit satisfying adsorption capacity, excellent selectivity and fast adsorption rate toward phenoxy carboxylic acid (PCA) herbicides. Afterwards, a reliable analytical method for selective separation and determination of trace PCA herbicides in cereals was established by using magnetic solid-phase extraction (mag-MWCNTs-DMIPs as magnetic adsorbent) and UPLC-MS/MS detection. A series of requisite factors were optimized in detail to achieve expected extraction performance. Under the optimum MSPE parameters, the mean spiked recoveries for analytes in different cereals ranged from 86.7% to 95.2% with intra- and inter-day precision not greater than 8.5% and 10.6%, respectively. At last, the developed method was successfully utilized for determination the four PCA herbicides in actual cereals.