Novel sponge-like molecularly imprinted mesoporous silica material for selective isolation of bisphenol A and its analogues from sediment extracts

•Novel sponge-like molecularly imprinted mesoporous silica was synthesized.•Extraordinarily large specific surface area and highly interconnected 3-D porous network.•High specific adsorption capacity and fast adsorption kinetics for BPA.•Good class-selectivity and clean-up effect for bisphenols in sediment under SPE mode.•Good recoveries and sensitivity for bisphenols using the MISMS–SPE coupled with HPLC–DAD method.

Bisphenol A (BPA) imprinted sponge mesoporous silica was synthesized using a combination of semi-covalent molecular imprinting and simple self-assembly process. The molecularly imprinted sponge mesoporous silica (MISMS) material obtained was characterized by FT-IR, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and nitrogen adsorption–desorption measurements. The results show that the MISMS possessed a large specific surface area (850.55 m2 g−1) and a highly interconnected 3-D porous network. As a result, the MISMS demonstrated a superior specific adsorption capacity of 169.22 μmol g−1 and fast adsorption kinetics (reaching equilibrium within 3 min) for BPA. Good class selectivity for BPA and its analogues (bisphenol F, bisphenol B, bisphenol E and bisphenol AF) was also demonstrated by the sorption experiment. The MISMS as solid-phase extraction (SPE) material was then evaluated for isolation and clean-up of these bisphenols (BPs) from sediment samples. An accurate and sensitive analytical method based on the MISMS–SPE coupled with HPLC–DAD has been successfully established for simultaneous determination of five BPs in river sediments with detection limits of 0.43–0.71 ng g−1 dry weight (dw). The recoveries of BPs for lyophilizated sediment samples at two spiking levels (50 and 500 ng g−1 dw for each BP) were in the range of 75.5–105.5% with RSD values below 7.5%.

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