Abstract: This work reports the preparation of molecularly imprinted polymer particles for the selective extraction and determination of four benzophenones from aqueous media. The polymer was prepared by using 4-vinylpridine as functional monomer, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as cross-linker, acetonitrile as porogenic solvent, and 2,2',4,4'-tetrehydroxybenzophenone as template. Good specific adsorption capacity (Qmax = 27.90 μmol g-1) for 2,2',4,4'-tetrehydroxybenzophenone was obtained in the sorption experiment and good class selectivity for 2,2',4,4'-tetrehydroxybenzophenone, 2,4-dihydroxybenzophenone, 2,2'-dihydroxy-4-methoxybenzophenone, 2,2'-dehydroxy-4,4'-dimethoxybenzophenone was demonstrated by the chromatographic evaluation experiment. Factors affecting the extraction efficiency of molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction procedure were investigated systematically. An accurate and sensitive analytical method based on the molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography and diode array detection has been successfully developed for the simultaneous determination of four benzophenones from tap water and river water with method detection limits of 0.25-0.72 ng mL-1. The recoveries of benzophenones for water samples at two spiking levels (500 and 5000 ng mL-1 for each benzophenone) were in the range of 86.9-103.3% with relative standard deviations (n = 3) below 9.2%. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Author keywords: Benzophenones, high-performance liquid chromatography, Molecularly imprinted polymers, Solid-phase extraction, Water samples