Novel surface dummy molecularly imprinted silica as sorbent for solid-phase extraction of bisphenol A from water samples

• A novel surface dummy molecularly imprinted silica prepared by a hybrid strategy.
• Completely avoid the interference of residual template molecules in sorbent.
• High extraction efficiency, high enrichment factor and acceptable reusability.
• Successfully detect bisphenol A in water samples by a new SPE-HPLC-UV method.

A novel surface molecularly imprinted silica composite was prepared by a dummy-template imprinting strategy for the solid-phase extraction (SPE) of bisphenol A (BPA). 2,2-Bis(4-hydroxyphenyl) hexafluoropropane (BPAF) was chosen as the template molecule, and a hybrid technique was used for imprinting procedure. The imprinted silica was characterized by FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, thermo-gravimetric analysis, and nitrogen adsorption–desorption isotherms. The static binding test verified that the imprinted silica had much higher recognition ability for BPA than the non-imprinted silica, and the kinetic adsorption test presented the fast binding kinetics of the surface imprinted silica for BPA. When used as a SPE sorbent, the imprinted silica showed high extraction efficiencies and high enrichment factor for BPA. Based on the imprinted silica, a SPE-HPLC-UV method was developed and successfully applied to the detection of BPA in BPA-spiked lake water, tap water and drinking water samples with a high recovery of 97.3–106.0%, a RSD of 1.2–3.8% (n=3) and a limit of detection (S/N=3) of 0.3 ng/mL. The analysis results of a certified BPA sample also demonstrated the reliability of present method. The new surface dummy molecularly imprinted silica completely avoided the interference of the residual template molecules and greatly improved the binding kinetic of the target molecules. Therefore, it can be used as a good sorbent for SPE of BPA in environmental water samples.

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