Surface-imprinted magnetic particles for highly selective sulfonamides recognition prepared by reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization

In this work, novel magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers (MMIPs) were prepared by reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization using sulfamerazine as the template. With the controlled/living property of RAFT polymerization, the resulting MMIPs showed high selectivity for sulfonamides recognition. The MMIPs were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared, vibrating sample magnetometer, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. The static and selectivity binding experiments demonstrated the desirable adsorption capacity and high selectivity of the MMIPs. The developed MMIPs were used as the solid-phase extraction sorbents to selectively extract four sulfonamides from aqueous solution. The recoveries of the spiked pond water ranged from 61.2 to 94.1 % with RSD lower than 6.5 %. This work demonstrated a versatile approach for the preparation of well-constructed MMIPs for application in the field of solid-phase extraction.