Novel ion imprinted magnetic mesoporous silica for selective magnetic solid phase extraction of trace Cd followed by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry detection

•Novel Cd(II)-II-MMS was prepared by surface imprinting combined with a sol–gel process.•Cd(II)-II-MMS has a high selectivity and adsorption capacity for Cd(II).•A sensitive and selective method of Cd(II)-IIMSPE-GFAAS was developed for trace cadmium analysis.•The method can be applied to determine trace Cd in various samples with complicated matrix.

Determination of trace Cd in environmental, biological and food samples is of great significance to toxicological research and environmental pollution monitoring. While the direct determination of Cd in real-world samples is difficult due to its low concentration and the complex matrix. Herein, a novel Cd(II)-ion imprinted magnetic mesoporous silica (Cd(II)-II-MMS) was prepared and was employed as a selective magnetic solid-phase extraction (MSPE) material for extraction of trace Cd in real-world samples followed by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS) detection. Under the optimized conditions, the detection limit of the proposed method was 6.1 ng L− 1 for Cd with the relative standard deviation (RSD) of 4.0% (c = 50 ng L− 1, n = 7), and the enrichment factor was 50-fold. To validate the proposed method, Certified Reference Materials of GSBZ 50009–88 environmental water, ZK018-1 lyophilized human urine and NIES10-b rice flour were analyzed and the determined values were in a good agreement with the certified values. The proposed method exhibited a robust anti-interference ability due to the good selectivity of Cd(II)-II-MMS toward Cd(II). It was successfully employed for the determination of trace Cd(II) in environmental water, human urine and rice samples with recoveries of 89.3–116%, demonstrating that the proposed method has good application potential in real world samples with complex matrix.