Synthesis and characterization of fluorescence molecularly imprinted polymers as sensor for highly sensitive detection of dibutyl phthalate from tap water samples

In this paper, based on Mn doped ZnS quantum dots (QDs) and by anchoring a MIPs layer on the surface of SiO 2 nanoparticles, the novel fluorescence molecularly imprinted polymers (SiO 2 @QDs@MIPs) were successfully synthesized by precipitation polymerization, with acrylamide (AM) as the functional monomer and ethyl glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as the cross-linker. The prepared SiO 2 @QDs@MIPs were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) and fluorescence spectroscopy. The products show excellent optical properties and molecular recognition ability of molecularly imprinted polymers. It can recognize sensitively and selectively the template molecules, dibutyl phthalate (DBP). Under optimized experiment conditions, the fluorescence intensity decreases linearly with increasing concentration of DBP. in the range of 5–50   μmol   L −1 , with a correlation coefficient of 0.9974. Furthermore, the SiO 2 @QDs@MIPs were successfully applied to analysis of tap water sample, and the average recovery rate of DBP at three spiking levels is more than 97.80%, with RSD below 3.25%. This study provides a promising strategy to fabricate fluorescent molecular imprinting polymer with highly selective recognition ability.