Nanofluid of zinc oxide nanoparticles in ionic liquid for single drop liquid microextraction of fungicides in environmental waters prior to high performance liquid chromatographic analysis

Using a nanofluid obtained by dispersing ZnO nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) in 1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate, new single drop microextraction method was developed for simultaneous extraction of three fungicides (chlorothalonil, kresoxim-methyl and famoxadone) in water samples prior to their analysis by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC-VWD). The parameters affecting the extraction efficiency such as amount of ZnO NPs in the nanofluid, solvent volume, extraction time, stirring rate, pH and ionic strength of the sample solution were optimized. Under the optimized conditions, the limits of detection were in the range of 0.13–0.19   ng/mL, the precision of the method assessed with intra-day and inter-day relative standard deviations were <4.82% and <7.04%, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied to determine the three fungicides in real water samples including lake water, river water, as well as effluent and influent of wastewater treatment plant, with recoveries in the range of 74.94–96.11% at 5   ng/mL spiking level. Besides to being environmental friendly, the high enrichment factor and the data quality obtained with the proposed method demonstrated its potential for application in multi residue analysis of fungicides in actual water samples.