Preparation of dummy-imprinted polymers by Pickering emulsion polymerization for the selective determination of seven bisphenols from sediment samples.

The dummy molecularly imprinted polymers were prepared by Pickering emulsion polymerization. 4,4'-(1-Phenylethylidene) bisphenol was selected as the dummy template to avoid the leakage of the target bisphenols. The microsphere particles were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and nitrogen adsorption-desorption measurements, demonstrating that the regular-shaped and medium-sized particles (40-70 μm) were obtained with a specific surface area of 355.759 m(2) /g and a total pore volume of 0.561 cm(3) /g. The molecular imprinting properties of the particles were evaluated by static adsorption and chromatographic evaluation experiments. The association constant and maximum adsorption amount of bisphenol A were 0.115 mmol/L and 3.327 μmol/g using Scatchard analysis. The microsphere particles were then used as a solid-phase extraction sorbent for selective extraction of seven bisphenols. The method of dummy molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography and diode array detection was successfully established for the extraction and determination of seven bisphenols from environmental sediment samples with method detection limits of 0.6-1.1 ng/g. Good recoveries (75.5-105.2%) for sediment samples at two spiking levels (500 and 250 ng/g) and reproducibility (RSDs < 7.7%, n = 3) were obtained.