Magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer prepared by microwave heating for confirmatory determination of chloramphenicol in chicken feed using high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract A magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer (MMIP) for chloramphenicol was prepared using a surface-imprinted and microwave-heating-induced polymerization method. The surfaces of the magnetic particles were first double-bond functionalized with 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate (γ-MPS), followed by the copolymerization of 4-vinyl pyridine (4-VP) and trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate (TRIM) in the presence of chloramphenicol as a template and 1,1-azobis(cyclohexane-carbonitrile) (ABCN) as an initiator in a mixture of dimethyl sulfoxide and water with microwave heating at 80°C. The magnetic polymer possesses supraparamagnetic properties and was used to concentrate and cleanup chicken feed extract, followed by chromatographic separation using a Lichrospher®100 RP C8 column and detection with two multi-reaction monitoring transitions at m/z 321→ 152 and m/z 321→ 257. The mean recoveries obtained at two spiking levels were in the range of 94.6–100% The relative intra- and inter-day standard deviations were in the range of 1.4–2.6% and 5.1–5.7%, respectively. The detection limit of the method was 0.12 µg kg−1. This confirmatory method was successfully applied to determine chloramphenicol in chicken feed samples.