Rapid screening of clenbuterol hydrochloride in chicken samples by molecularly imprinted matrix solid-phase dispersion coupled with liquid chromatography

A simple and selective molecularly imprinted matrix solid-phase dispersion (MI-MSPD) method coupled with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) ultraviolet detection was developed for rapid screening of clenbuterol hydrochloride (CH) in chicken samples. The new molecularly imprinted microspheres (MIM) were synthesized by using butylamine and chloroaniline as dummy template with aqueous suspension polymerization and revealed good affinity to CH in aqueous solution. The application of the obtained MIM as sorbent of matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD) improved the selectivity of extraction procedure and avoided the effect of template leakage on quantitative analysis. Under the optimized conditions, good linearity of CH was obtained in a range of 0.059–18.30 μg mL−1 with the correlation coefficient (R) of 0.9996. The recoveries of CH at three spiked levels were ranged from 92.0 to 99.1% with the relative standard deviation less than 4.0% (n = 3). The presented MI-MSPD-HPLC method combined the superiority of MIM and MSPD, and therefore could be potentially applied for the determination of CH in complicated biological samples.

► A new MI-MSPD-HPLC method is developed for rapid screening of clenbuterol in chicken.
► Dummy molecularly imprinted microspheres are synthesized by suspension polymerization.
► The extraction selectivity is significantly improved.
► The effect of template leaking on quantitative analysis is avoided.