Monolithic molecular imprinted polymer fiber for recognition and solid phase microextraction of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in biological samples prior to capillary electrophoresis analysis

A novel capillary electrophoresis (CE) method coupled with monolithic molecular imprinted polymer (MIP) fiber based solid phase microextraction (SPME) was developed for selective and sensitive determination of ephedrine (E) and pseudoephedrine (PE). With in situ polymerization in a silica capillary mold and E as template, the MIP fibers could be produced in batch reproducibly and each fiber was available for 50 extraction cycles without significant decrease in extraction ability. Using the MIP fiber under optimized extraction conditions, CE detection limits of E and PE were greatly lowered from 0.20 to 0.00096 μg/mL and 0.12 to 0.0011 μg/mL, respectively. Analysis of urine and serum samples by the MIP-SPME-CE method was also performed, with results indicating that E and PE could be selectively extracted. The recoveries and relative standard deviations (RSDs) for sample analysis were found in the range of 91–104% and 3.8–9.1%, respectively.

► The fibers can be simply, rapidly and conveniently prepared in batch reproducibly. ► The reusability of fibers is over 50 times. ► The target analyte could be selectively extracted by analysis of real samples. ► The detection sensitivity is high enough for μg/L level target analyte.