Fast separation and determination of erythromycin with magnetic imprinted solid extraction coupled with high performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

In this paper a novel composite imprinted material based on poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) coated magnetic multi-walled carbon nanotubes was successfully synthesized using erythromycin as the template and methacrylic acid as the functional monomer. The magnetic carbon nanotube molecularly imprinted polymers (mag-MWCNTs-MIPs) were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and vibrating sample magnetometery (VSM) in detail. The results showed that a magnetic imprinted layer was coated steadily on the surface of the multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Experiments of adsorption dynamics, static adsorption and selective recognition were conducted to evaluate the adsorption performance. The results showed that the mag-MWCNTs-MIPs displayed rapid dynamic adsorption toward erythromycin, which only needed 30 min to achieve adsorption equilibrium with a maximum adsorption capacity of 31.07 mg g⁻¹. The mag-MWCNTs-MIPs were applied, coupled with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), to quickly enrich and detect erythromycin from fish tissue samples with recoveries of 82.7–88.5%. The mag-MWCNTs-MIPs can not only be collected and separated quickly and easily by an external magnet, but also have outstanding mechanical properties and specific recognition toward erythromycin.