Graphene oxide adsorbent based dispersive solid phase extraction coupled with multi-pretreatment clean-up for analysis of trace aflatoxins in traditional proprietary Chinese medicines

Abstract Graphene oxide (GO)-based dispersive solid phase extraction (D-SPE) method combined with multi-step preparation has been proposed for the evaluation of trace aflatoxins in proprietary Chinese medicines (PCM). After being extracted by methanol, the sample was purified based on multi-step preparation, including dehydration with MgSO 4 /NaCl and cleanup with neutral alumina. Then GO was used as an adsorbent in D-SPE method for further preconcentration of aflatoxins prior to high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection. The selected conditions were investigated. The Box-Behnken design (BBD) was used to optimize factors affecting adsorption procedure. Under the optimized conditions, good linear relationships had been achieved with the correlation coefficient (R 2 ) varying from 0.9904 to 0.9990. The LODs and LOQs were ranging from 0.020 to 0.041 ng/mL and 0.061 to 0.125 ng/mL, respectively. The results of the recoveries were 74.0–102.7% for the four aflatoxins, while the precisions from 1.8% to 7.2% were obtained, which indicated that the method was suitable for the analysis of aflatoxins in PCM.