Abstract:

An effective method for the preparation of magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) on attapulgite (ATP) using microcystin-LR (MC-LR) as template molecule through reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) radical polymerization was reported. A novel MIPs stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) coating was prepared by sol-gel method. The structure and morphology of MIPs were characterized by infrared spectroscopy (IR) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The adsorption performance of SBSE coated with MC-LR was studied by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The results showed that under the optimized experimental conditions, the present method has high selectivity to MC-LR. A good linearity was achieved for MC-LR over the range of 0.010-5.0 mg/L and the limit of detection (S/N=3) was found to be as low as 0.27 μg/L. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of MC-LR in water samples. The average recoveries ranged from 83.33% to 100.07% with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 1.40%-9.17% at three spiked levels (20, 40 and 80 μg/L). The developed method is rapid, selective and sensitive, and adapts to the analysis of trace MC in water samples.

Key words: attapulgite (ATP), magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer, microcystin-LR (MC-LR), reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT), stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE)