Metal-organic framework-templated synthesis of magnetic nanoporous carbon as an efficient absorbent for enrichment of phenylurea herbicides

Nanoporous carbon with a high specific surface area and unique porous structure represents an attractive material as an adsorbent in analytical chemistry. In this study, a magnetic nanoporous carbon (MNC) was fabricated by direct carbonization of Co-based metal-organic framework in nitrogen atmosphere without using any additional carbon precursors. The MNC was used as an effective magnetic adsorbent for the extraction and enrichment of some phenylurea herbicides (monuron, isoproturon, diuron and buturon) in grape and bitter gourd samples prior to their determination by high performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection. Several important experimental parameters that could influence the extraction efficiency were investigated and optimized. Under the optimum conditions, a good linearity was achieved in the concentration range of 1.0-100.0 ng g(-1) for monuron, diuron and buturon and 1.5-100.0 ng g(-1) for isoproturon with the correlation coefficients (r) larger than 0.9964. The limits of detection (S/N = 3) of the method were in the range from 0.17 to 0.46 ng g(-1). The results indicated that the MNC material was stable and efficient adsorbent for the magnetic solid-phase extraction of phenylurea herbicides and would have a great application potential for the extraction and preconcentration of more organic pollutants from real samples. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.