Hydrophilic gallic acid–imprinted polymers over magnetic mesoporous silica microspheres with excellent molecular recognition ability in aqueous fruit juices

Abstract Hydrophilic molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for gallic acid (GA) were prepared with excellent recognition ability in an aqueous solution. The proposed MIPs were designed by self-polymerization of dopamine (DA) on magnetic mesoporous silica (Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 @mSiO 2 , MMS) using GA as template. Resulting Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 @mSiO 2 @MIPs (MMS–MIPs) were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), and evaluated by adsorption isotherms/kinetics and competitive adsorption. The adsorption behavior between GA and MMS–MIPs followed Langmuir and Sips adsorption isotherms with a maximum adsorption capacity at 88.7 mg/g and pseudo-second-order reaction kinetics with fast binding (equilibrium time at 100 min). In addition, MMS–MIPs showed rapid magnetic separation (10 s) and stability (retained 95.2% after six cycles). Subsequently, MMS–MIPs were applied for the selective extraction and determination of GA from grape, apple, peach and orange juices (4.02, 3.91, 5.97, and 0.67 μg/g, respectively). Generally, the described method may pave the way towards rationally designing more advanced hydrophilic MIPs.