Rationale
Endocrine‐disrupting chemicals (EDCs), widespread and easily ingested through the simple food chain, have been suggested to pose potential carcinogenic threats to human health. Considering food safety and public health, it is urgent to establish a sensitive and effective method to enrich and determine EDCs in food samples.
Methods
Novel hybrid nanocomposites Fe3O4@A‐TpBD@NH2‐MIL‐125(Ti) were synthesized through the formation of amide bonds. The as‐prepared Fe3O4 were innovatively encapsulated with 4‐aminobenzoic acid functionalized COF(A‐TpBD) to generate bare carboxyl (‐COOH), which formed amide bonds with the NH2‐MIL‐125(Ti), generating well‐defined and hierarchical hybrid materials. The Fe3O4@A‐TpBD@NH2‐MIL‐125(Ti) materials were used as the adsorbents for magnetic solid‐phase extraction (MSPE) coupled with high‐performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS/MS) to enrich and determine EDCs (E1, E2, E3 and BPA) from milk samples.
Results
Fe3O4@A‐TpBD@NH2‐MIL‐125(Ti) exhibited improved adsorption efficiency and selectivity based on π‐π stacking interaction, hydrogen bonding, electrostatic interaction, and the interaction between the hydroxyl group in EDCs and titanium ions (IV, [Ti]4+). Under the optimized conditions, Fe3O4@A‐TpBD@NH2‐MIL‐125(Ti)‐based MSPE coupled with HPLC/MS/MS showed good linearity with correlation coefficient (R2) ≥0.9983 and high sensitivity with limits of detection (LODs) in the range of 0.37–0.85 μg/L. Moreover, the developed method was successfully employed to detect EDCs in milk samples.
Conclusions
Fe3O4@A‐TpBD@NH2‐MIL‐125(Ti) possess good adsorption capability and selectivity for EDCs. In addition, the proposed MSPE‐HPLC/MS/MS method based on Fe3O4@A‐TpBD@NH2‐MIL‐125(Ti) is effective and sensitive for the determination of EDCs in real samples, which can be used as a robust alternative method to monitor EDCs in complex matrices.