Abstract: Surface reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization method was firstly applied to the preparation of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) coated silicon solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibers. With Sudan I as template, an ultra-thin MIP coating with about 0.55-μm thickness was obtained with homogeneous structure and controlled composition, due to the controllable radical growing and chain propagation in surface RAFT polymerization. The MIP-coated fibers were found with enhanced selectivity coefficients (3.0 - 6.5) to Sudan I - IV dyes in contrast with those reported in our previous work. Furthermore, the ultra-thin thickness of MIP coating was helpful to the effective elution of template and fast adsorption/desorption kinetics, so only about 18 min was needed for MIP-coated SPME operation. The detection limits of 21 - 55 ng L-1 were achieved for four Sudan dyes, when MIP-coated SPME was coupled with liquid chromatography (LC) and mass spectrometry (MS) detection. The MIP-coated SPME - LC - MS/MS method was tested for the monitoring of ultra trace Sudan dyes in spiked chilli tomato sauce and chilli pepper samples, and high enrichment effect, remarkable matrix peaks-removing capability, and consequent high sensitivities were achieved to four Sudan dyes
Template and target information: Sudan dyes, Sudan I, Sudan II, Sudan III, Sudan IV
Author keywords: molecularly imprinted polymer, coating, solid-phase microextraction, Reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization