Facile and rapid preparation of fluorinated imprinted adsorbent for magnetic solid phase extraction of liquid–crystal monomers

A new fluorinated imprinted adsorbent (MIA) for magnetic solid phase extraction (MSPE) of liquid crystal monomer (LCM) pollutants was one-pot prepared within 3.5 h using 4-[difluoro(3,4,5-trifluorophenoxy)methyl]-3,5-difluoro-4′-ethyl-biphenyl (DFBP) as template and 1H,1H,2H,2H-heptadecafluorodecyl acrylate/vinylanthracene as dual monomers. The structure, morphology, and magnetic properties of MIA fabricated were investigated by various characterization techniques. Under the optimal conditions the prepared MIA presented satisfactory specific recognition performance. The recognition factor and adsorption capacity towards DFBP were 2.7 and 15.9 mg/g, respectively. The specific recognition behaviors of MIA/MSPE towards DFBP were surveyed by means of adsorption kinetics and adsorption isotherms. Combining MSPE with HPLC coupled to a diode array detector (DAD), a sensitive, reliable and anti-interference method for the monitoring of LCMs residuals in various environmental water and soil samples was established. The achieved enrichment factors were 132–248 and 96–204 in water and soil samples, respectively. The corresponding limits of detection were 0.0017–0.0051 μg/L and 0.087–0.28 μg/kg, respectively. Moreover, confirmatory experiments were adopted to inspect the accuracy of the established MIA/MSPE-HPLC/DAD approach. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that an imprinted material has been used for specific isolation and capture of LCMs which have been classified as emerging organic pollutants.