Preparation of polydopamine coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles and their application for enrichment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from environmental water samples

Core/shell structured magnetic Fe3O4/polydopamine (Fe3O4/PDA) nanoparticles have been successfully synthesized and developed as a magnetic solid-phase extraction (SPE) adsorbent in dispersion mode for the determination of trace polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in environmental samples. The Fe3O4/PDA synthetic procedure is simple and involves no organic solvents. Only 20 mg of Fe3O4/PDA adsorbents are required to extract PAHs from 500 mL water samples. The adsorption attains equilibrium rapidly and analysts are eluted with acetonitrile readily. The extraction efficiency is not influenced by salt concentrations up to 300 mM and pH values over the range 4–11. Under optimized conditions, the detection limits of PAHs are in the range of 0.5–1.9 ng L−1. The accuracy of the method is evaluated by the recoveries of PAHs from environmental samples. Good recoveries (76.4–107%) with low relative standard deviations from 1.0% to 9.7% are achieved. Comparison study shows that the recoveries of target PAHs are low when they are extracted using traditional SPE method even with the addition of methanol or tetrabutylammonium bromide surfactants in water samples, suggesting great application potential of magnetic SPE method to preconcentrate highly hydrophobic contaminants (such as PAHs) from large volume of water samples. This new SPE method provides several advantages, such as simplicity, low environmental impact, high extraction efficiency, high breakthrough volumes, convenient extraction procedure, and short analysis time.

► We propose a new and simple method to prepare magnetic SPE adsorbent Fe3O4/PDA.
► The preparation of Fe3O4/PDA adsorbents does not require organic solvents.
► The adsorbents show a large surface area and strong superparamagneticity.
► Only 20 mg of Fe3O4/PDA are required to extract PAHs from 500 mL water samples.