Novel pitaya-inspired well-defined core–shell nanospheres with ultrathin surface imprinted nanofilm from magnetic mesoporous nanosilica for highly efficient chloramphenicol removal

• Novel pitaya-inspired well-defined core–shell imprinted nanospheres was obtained.
• Magnetic nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed into pore of mesoporous nanosilica.
• Surface imprinted nanofilm was uniform and ultrathin with thickness of only 9.0 nm.
• MMSNs@MIPs showed high adsorption capacity, fast kinetics and selectivity to CAP.
• MMSNs@MIPs exhibited a good magnetic property and reuse for practical application.

Novel selective nanoadsorbents should be well developed to eliminate chloramphenicol efficiently in aquatic environment. In this research, we reported novel, well-defined core–shell surface imprinted nanospheres with ultrathin polymer film based onto magnetic mesoporous nanosilica (MMSNs@MIPs) with the similar structure of pitaya via a facile in-situ precipitation polymerization, which was used as an advanced selective nanoadsorbent to remove chloramphenicol. SEM, TEM, VSM, XRD, TGA and FT-IR were characterized to analyze the physical–chemical property. Magnetic nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed into the pore of mesoporous silica. The imprinted nanoshell was uniform and ultrathin, with the thickness of 9.0 nm. MMSNs@MIPs had a large adsorption capacity of CAP and reached the equilibrium rapidly within 30 min, owing to mesoporous nanosilica core and ultrathin imprinted nanoshell. The increase in temperature enhanced adsorption capacity and kinetics, indicating the adsorption process was endothermic reaction. Adsorption isotherms and kinetics data could be better fitted by Freundlich model and the pseudo-second-order rate equation, respectively. The selective nanoadsorbent exhibited highly specific recognition to template CAP from water solutions as compared with other reference antibiotics. MMSNs@MIPs also possessed a fast magnetic separable ability and good thermal stability for the potential application in water treatments.

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