Fast microwave-assisted synthesis of magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer for sulfamethoxazole

Abderrahman Lamaoui; José María Palacios-Santander; Aziz Amine; Laura Cubillana-Aguilera

doi:10.1016/j.talanta.2021.122430

Fast microwave-assisted synthesis of magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer for sulfamethoxazole

Talanta. 2021 Sep 1:232:122430. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2021.122430. Epub 2021 Apr 21.

Authors

Abderrahman Lamaoui¹, José María Palacios-Santander², Aziz Amine³, Laura Cubillana-Aguilera⁴

Affiliations

¹ Laboratoire Génie des Procédés & Environnement, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Hassan II University of Casablanca, B.P. 146, Mohammedia, Morocco; Department of Analytical Chemistry, Institute of Research on Electron Microscopy and Materials (IMEYMAT), Faculty of Sciences, Campus de Excelencia Internacional del Mar (CEIMAR), University of Cadiz, Campus Universitario de Puerto Real, Polígono del Río San Pedro S/N, 11510, Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain.
² Department of Analytical Chemistry, Institute of Research on Electron Microscopy and Materials (IMEYMAT), Faculty of Sciences, Campus de Excelencia Internacional del Mar (CEIMAR), University of Cadiz, Campus Universitario de Puerto Real, Polígono del Río San Pedro S/N, 11510, Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain. Electronic address: josem.palacios@uca.es.
³ Laboratoire Génie des Procédés & Environnement, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Hassan II University of Casablanca, B.P. 146, Mohammedia, Morocco. Electronic address: a.amine@univh2m.ac.ma.
⁴ Department of Analytical Chemistry, Institute of Research on Electron Microscopy and Materials (IMEYMAT), Faculty of Sciences, Campus de Excelencia Internacional del Mar (CEIMAR), University of Cadiz, Campus Universitario de Puerto Real, Polígono del Río San Pedro S/N, 11510, Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain.

PMID: 34074416
DOI: 10.1016/j.talanta.2021.122430

Abstract

A fast and simple strategy based on the microwave technique for the preparation of magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers (MMIPs) is proposed for the selective determination of sulfamethoxazole (SMX). The MMIPs were synthesized at 70 °C in 20 min, being much faster than the conventional techniques. A computational approach based on density functional theory was used to design the MMIP and compare the two most used monomers in MIPs, including methacrylic acid (MAA) and acrylamide (AM). Then, two different MMIPs were prepared using AM and MAA as monomers. The resultant materials were characterized with X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, scanning/transmission electron microscopy, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Besides, the adsorption characterizations suggested that the adsorption of SMX followed the pseudo-second-order model in the kinetic study and the Sips model in the isotherm study. The experimental results corroborated the computational approach. Furthermore, Both MMIPs demonstrated good selectivity. The MMIP-AM and MMIP-MAA were applied as adsorbents in magnetic dispersive solid-phase extraction combined with UV-visible spectroscopy to quantify SMX. The obtained limits of detection and quantification were lower than 0.59 and 1.77 μM, respectively for both MMIPs. The sensitivity of both MMIPs was in the range of 0.021-0.023 (SI). Our findings revealed that there is no significant difference in the analytical parameters between MMIP-AM and MMIP-MAA. However, the application of both MMIPs in a real sample (tap water) showed that the recovery values of SMX obtained with MMIP-AM (68-70%) were lower than that with MMIP-MAA (80-90%) suggesting that MMIP-MAA is more appropriate for SMX determination.

Keywords: Computational approach; Magnetic nanoparticles; Microwave synthesis; Molecularly imprinted polymer; Sulfamethoxazole.