Cationic polyelectrolyte/graphene oxide as an efficient sorbent for the extraction and analysis of trace acidic herbicides in vegetables

The facile preparation and characterization of a cationic polyelectrolyte (polydiallyldimethylammonium chloride, PDDA) fabricated graphene oxide-grafted silica microsphere (PDDA@GO@Sil) with high positive charge density as the sorbent for the high selective capture of acidic herbicides were reported. The theoretical calculation showed that there were strong adsorption energies between the PDDA and analytes, and the main interaction was the hydrogen bonding from O H…Cl and C O…H C. Static- and dynamic- state adsorption results indicated that acidic herbicides were the monolayer coverage onto the PDDA@GO@Sil due to the electrostatic attraction between the sorbent and analytes, and electrostatic repulsion among analytes. Under the optimized conditions obtained with the single-factor experiment and response surface methodology, this established method was used for the enrichment and determination of herbicides in two vegetables. Method detection limits were in the range of 0.75–1.50 µg L −1 indicating that the introduction of PDDA provided the excellent extraction capacity toward acidic herbicides. The obtained results exhibited that the developed method was feasible, reliable, selective and accurate for the determination of acidic herbicides in real samples.