Preparation and evaluation of dummy-template molecularly imprinted polymer as a potential sorbent for solid phase extraction of imidazole fungicides from river water

Abstract Dummy molecularly imprinted polymer (DMIP) for imidazole fungicides was prepared for the first time using alpha-(2,4-Dichlorophenyl)-1H-imidazole-1-ethanol (DCE) as the fragment template. The imprinting selectivity of DCE-DMIP was evaluated for climbazole (CBZ), clotrimazole (CMZ) and miconazole (MNZ) by liquid chromatography, imprinting factors of 10.9, 10.8 and >10.7 were achieved, respectively. Heterogeneous binding sites were found in the DCE-DMIP, the corresponding saturation capacity and dissociation constant for the high affinity binding sites were 13.05 μmol g –1 and 0.4701 mmol L –1 . High efficient method based on dummy molecularly imprinted solid phase extraction (DMISPE) coupled with HPLC was established for the selective enrichment of CBZ, CMZ and MNZ in river water using DCE-DMIP as sorbent. DMISPE conditions including sample loading pH/volume, selective washing and elution solvents were carefully optimized. The developed method showed good recoveries (84.2–95.0%) and precision (RSDs 1.7–5.0%, n  = 5) for samples spiked at two different concentration levels (0.5 and 2.5 μg L –1 ). The detection limits were ranged from 0.023 to 0.031 μg L –1 . The results demonstrated good potential of this method for sample pretreatment of azole fungicides in environmental water samples.