Use of a hypercrosslinked triphenylamine polymer as an efficient adsorbent for the enrichment of phenylurea herbicides

A hypercrosslinked triphenylamine polymer (HCTPA) was prepared through a simple one-step Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction. The HCTPA had an extended π-conjugated system, large specific surface area and high micropore volume. In order to evaluate its extraction performance, the HCTPA was used as the adsorbent for the solid-phase extraction of the phenylurea herbicides (monuron, chlortoluron, isoproturon, monolinuron and buturon) from watermelon, tomato and cucumber samples. The main parameters that could affect the extraction efficiency including the sample volume, sample solution pH, sample solution loading rate and desorption conditions were investigated and optimized. Under the optimized conditions, the HCTPA showed a good extraction performance for the target analytes. The linear range for the quantification of the analytes was in the range of 0.4-160.0 ng g−1 with the correlation coefficients of 0.9996-0.9999. The limits of detection (S/N = 3) of the analytes by the method ranged from 0.06 to 0.12 ng g−1 for watermelon and tomato, and 0.06-0.15 ng g−1 for cucumber samples. The recoveries of the analytes for the method were between 83.1% and 112.5% with the relative standard deviations below 5.5%. These results indicate that the HCTPA can be used for the enrichment of phenylurea herbicides from complex matrix samples like watermelon, tomato and cucumbers.