Determination of sulfonamides in bovine milk with column-switching high performance liquid chromatography using surface imprinted silica with hydrophilic external layer as restricted access and selective extraction material

A novel restricted access-molecularly imprinted material (RA-MIP) with selectivity for sulfonamides was synthesized using initiator-transfer agent-terminator (iniferter) method, a "living"/controlled radical polymerization technique. The material was prepared by grafting two layers with different functions on the silica support. To perform a "grafting from" polymerization, iniferter was immobilized on the surface of silica. The internal sulfamethazine imprinted polymer and the external poly(glycidyl methacrylate) [poly(GMA)] were then grafted successively. The hydrophilic structures were formed on the external layer of the material by the hydrolysis of the linear poly(GMA) for protein removal. The result has shown that this restricted access-MIP grafted silica (RA-MIP-SG) not only has the selectivity for the template and its analog, but also has the ability of exclusion for bovine serum albumin (BSA). It indicated that the material possesses both properties of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) and restricted access material (RAM). Using RA-MIP-SG as pre-column, a column-switching HPLC method was established for the determination of sulfonamides in bovine milk. Direct sample injection was performed in the analysis, which provides a convenient analytical procedure. Good linearity in the range of 2-400 ng mL(-1) (R>0.998) has been obtained for seven sulfonamides in the study. The recoveries of all the analytes at three concentration levels are between 93% and 107% with the RSD<8.0%. The limits of quantification and limits of detection are less than or equal to 2.7 ng mL(-1) and 0.8 ng mL(-1) respectively. It demonstrated this RA-MIP-SG can be applied in sample extraction and clean-up for the determination of sulfonamides in bovine milk by direct injection and column-switching HPLC with good efficiency and reliability.