Facile synthesis of uniform spherical covalent organic frameworks for determination of neonicotinoid insecticides

A uniform spherical structure covalent organic framework (TAPA-BPDA-COF) was prepared by a facile method at room temperature with tris(4-aminophenyl)amine (TAPA) and 4,4′-biphenyldicarboxaldehyde (BPDA) as building blocks. Based on the solid phase extraction with the TAPA-BPDA-COF as the sorbent and high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection, a sensitive analytical method was established for the determination of four neonicotinoid insecticides from water and honey samples. Under the optimum conditions, good linear response for the quantification of the analytes was achieved in the range of 0.3–50.0 ng mL −1 for water samples and in the range of 8.0–500.0 ng g −1 for honey samples. The method recoveries fell in the range of 80.0–121.9% with RSDs less than 7.6%. The limits of detection at the signal to noise ratio of 3 were measured to be in the range of 0.08–0.12 ng mL −1 for water samples and 2.6–3.3 ng g −1 for honey samples, depending on compounds.