Magnetic polyethyleneimine functionalized reduced graphene oxide as a novel magnetic solid-phase extraction adsorbent for the determination of polar acidic herbicides in rice

A novel magnetic polyethyleneimine modified reduced graphene oxide (Fe₃O₄@PEI-RGO) had been fabricated based on a self-assemble approach between positive charged magnetic polyethyleneimine (Fe₃O₄@PEI) and negative charged GO sheets via electrostatic interaction followed by chemical reduction of GO to RGO. The as-prepared Fe₃O₄@PEI-RGO was characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and zeta potential analysis, and then was successfully applied to determine four phenoxy acid herbicides and dicamba in rice coupled with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). As a surface modifier of RGO, PEI not only effectually affected the surface property of RGO (e.g. zeta potential), but also changed the polarity of RGO and offered anion exchange groups to polar acidic herbicides, which would directly influence the type of adsorbed analytes. Compared with Fe₃O₄@PEI, Fe₃O₄/RGO and Fe₃O₄@PEI-GO, the as-prepared Fe₃O₄@PEI-RGO, integrating the superiority of PEI and RGO, showed higher extraction efficiency for polar acidic herbicides. Besides, the adsorption mechanism was investigated as well. It turned out that electrostatic interaction and π-π interaction were considered to be two major driving force for the adsorption process. Response surface methodology (RSM), a multivariate experimental design technique, was used to optimize experimental parameters affecting the extraction efficiency in detail. Under the optimal conditions, a satisfactory performance was obtained. The calibration curves were linear over the concentration ranging from 2 to 300 ng g⁻¹ with correlation coefficients (r) between 0.9985 and 0.9994. The limits of detection (LODs) were in the range of 0.67–2 ng g⁻¹. The recoveries ranged from 87.41% to 102.52% with relative standard deviations (RSDs) less than 8.94%. Taken together, the proposed method was an efficient pretreatment and enrichment procedure and could be successfully applied for selective extraction and determination of polar acidic herbicides in complex matrices.