Preparation of a hollow porous molecularly imprinted polymer using tetrabromobisphenol A as a dummy template and its application as SPE sorbent for determination of bisphenol A in tap water

In this paper, a highly selective sample cleanup procedure combing dummy molecular imprinting and solid-phase extraction (DMIP-SPE) was developed for the isolation and determination of bisphenol A (BPA) in tap water. The novel hollow porous dummy molecularly imprinted polymer (HPDMIP) was prepared adopting a sacrificial support approach, using tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), whose structure was similar to that of BPA, as the dummy template and mesoporous MCM-48 nanospheres as the support. Owing to a very short distance between the binding sites and the surface, a large surface area and a good steric structure to match its imprint molecules, the maximum adsorption capacities (Q(max)) of the dummy-imprinted and non-imprinted sorbents for BPA were as high as 445 and 340 mu mol g(-1), respectively, and the adsorption reached about 73% of Q(max) in 10 min. Meanwhile, a method was developed for the determination of BPA using HPDMIP as a solid-phase extraction enrichment sorbent coupled with HPLC. Under the optimum experimental conditions. HPDMIP exhibited satisfactory results in the enrichment and determination of BPA in tap water with a recovery rate of 95-105%, and relative standard deviations of below 6%, and it can achieve a limit of detection as low as 3 ng mL(-1). The developed extraction protocol eliminated the effect of template leakage on quantitative analysis and could be applied for the determination of BPA in complicated functional samples. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.