A novel adsorbent based on aptamer prepared via "thiol-ene" click for specific recognition of phthalic acid esters

In this paper, a novel adsorbent based on aptamer was prepared via "thiol-ene" click chemistry reaction and used for selective adsorbing the trace phthalic acid esters (PAEs) from drinking water and juice samples, which depended on the group selectivity of aptamers to the ester and the benzoyl groups of PAEs. The morphological structures of the obtained adsorbents were characterized by Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), fluorescence spectra, Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET). The selectivity of the prepared adsorbent was evaluated and the results showed that the recovery of the adsorbent with aptamer for PAEs was 66.10-108.90%, while the recovery of adsorbent without aptamer was only 32.41-37.59%. The limit of detection (LOD) (S/N = 3) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) (S/N = 10) of PAEs coupled with HPLC-UV were obtained in the range of 0.11-0.88 μg L^-1 and 0.22-1.33 μg L^-1, respectively. This work gave a facile and efficient approach to for specific enrichment and highly sensitivity detection of PAEs.