Efficient Near-Infrared Light-Responsive Imprinted Polymers as Pipette Tip Microsolid Phase Extraction Sorbent for Extraction and Determination of Dibutyl Phthalate in Plastics

Miniaturization of samples pretreatment platform simplifies analytical tasks in separation science. Here, a novel pipet tip microsolid phase extraction (PT-MSPE) smart device for the selective extraction of dibutyl phthalate (DBP) in plastic toy and cup was designed. In particular, the NIR light-responsive molecularly imprinting polymers (NIR-MIPs) was prepared by introducing Fe3O4 nanocomposites into thermoresponsive imprinting polymers. Subsequently, we fabricated a novel PT-MSPE device through coating the NIR-MIPs on the interior surface of a pipet tip by taking advantage of the photothermal property of NIR-MIPs for the first time. As the consequence, small volume of samples confined in a microsolid phase extraction device can be effectively and pollution-free thermally extracted by NIR-light irradiation. The light-induced heating treatment can dramatically accelerate template elution rates, resulting in rapid extraction in complicated samples. Hence, the PT-MSPE is used to simultaneous extract and detect DBP in plastic samples. The results are shown that the excellent recoveries of DBP in the actual samples are varied between 87.0% and 103.1% with RSDs ≤ 6.3%. The adsorption amount of PT-MSPE for DBP was 59.1 μg/g. The imprinting factor of PT-MSPE for DBP was 5.05. This study offers a new insight into the design of versatile PT-MSPE platforms and demonstrates its further potential development in various fields, including new drug development, environment examination, sanitation security, and other fields.