Water-dispersible pH/thermo dual-responsive microporous polymeric microspheres as adsorbent for dispersive solid-phase extraction of fluoroquinolones from environmental water samples and food samples

Multifunctional polymeric microspheres were prepared using hyper-cross-linking chemistry combined with surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization. The synthesized microspheres exhibited good water dispersibility, a high surface area, and pH/thermo dual-responsiveness. Fluoroquinolones (FQs), which contains a hydrophilic piperazine ring and hydrophobic fluorine atoms, were used as target analytes to assess the performance of the microspheres as a sorbent for dispersive solid-phase extraction (d-SPE). The d-SPE experimental parameters, including extraction time, amount of microspheres, extraction temperature, and sample solution pH, as well as the desorption conditions, were systematically studied. Coupled with LCMS/MS, an analytical method for analysis of trace-level FQs in water samples was developed and validated. Under optimal conditions, linearity with correlation coefficients (r) of >0.99 was achieved in the concentration range of 0.02–10 μg L−1. The limits of detection and quantification for the selected FQs were 5.0–6.7 and 12–20 ng L−1, respectively. High recovery values (93.1%–97.2%), a high enrichment factor (˜180), and good precision (RSD < 8%, n = 6) were obtained for FQ determination in spiked purified water samples. It was proposed that hydrophilic–hydrophobic transition induced by stretching and shrinking of polymer chains under different pH and temperature conditions offered good control of the surface wettability and altered the extraction behavior. The developed method was validated and was successfully applied to the analysis of FQs in environmental water samples, meat and milk samples. These results demonstrated that the water-dispersible polymeric microspheres have good potential for use in separation and extraction techniques.