ZIF-8 sacrificial-templated hollow COF architectures enabled highly efficient enrichment, determination and regulation of food hazards from infant formulas

Integration of functional micro-/nano-frameworks with various analytical techniques is favored to produce advanced and practical methods for identification, inspection, and regulation of hazards in agro-food products. Herein, two novel synthetic strategies were developed for preparation of core-shell structured ZIF-8@COF by using metal halides as the catalyst, and further construction of hollow-structured covalent organic frameworks (HCOFs) with a sacrificial template method. The HCOFs adsorbent exhibited high stability, universality and adsorption affinity for advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and aflatoxins (AFTs) than pristine COF. Combined with HPLC and HPLC-MS/MS, the applicability of this method was verified by infant formula samples with satisfying recoveries of 87.3%-98.9%. Furthermore, HCOF showed potential ability of adsorbing and removing AGEs from plasma without causing other risk. This work opens up the road for further research on the simple method to synthesis HCOF, besides, provides a technological basis for monitoring and controlling AGEs and AFTs in milk powder.