Three-dimensional (3D) thermal controlled polymer for simplified dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction in phthalic acid easters detection of straw

A simplified DLLME method with thermal controlled polymer instead of toxic organic solvents was established. The polyfunctional group polymer has a solid hydrophobic interaction force with PAEs, leading to the high recovery of the proposed method. [Display omitted] •A 3D thermal controlled polymer was used as a green extractant to simplify the steps of DLLME.•The whole extraction process can be as short as 5 min.•The satisfied mass transfer rate can be attributed to the extractant being water-soluble at room temperature.•High extraction ability can be achieved by the strong intermolecular forces between the polymer and PAEs. In this paper, a three-dimensional (3D) polyfunctional group and thermal controlled polymer p(POSS-co-DMAEMA) was prepared based on the chemical structure of the phthalic acid easters (PAEs) and applied as an extractant for dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) in combination with HPLC-UV. The polymer with good biocompatibility can be dispersed and aggregated by shaking and heating based on the thermal controlled properties without the assistance of instruments, which shortened the DLLME process as low as 5 min. The feasibility of the developed method was verified using 5 PAEs as targets in simulated water samples, which showed good precision (RSD%, 1.3–10.0, n = 3) and low detection limit (0.19–0.52 ng mL−1) under the optimal extraction conditions. This proposed method was successfully applied in analyzing four straws and good spiked recoveries over the range of 91.60–128.00% were obtained. Furthermore, molecular docking was employed to explore the molecular interactions and calculate binding energies between the polymer and organic pollutants, ensuring the synthesized polymer has a strong extraction ability for PAEs. The satisfied extraction efficiency can be attributed to the fact that the p(POSS-co-DMAEMA) is water-soluble at room temperature but hydrophobic at high temperature, and the high extraction ability can be achieved by the strong intermolecular forces between the polymer and PAEs. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method holds good promise for the trace analysis of PAEs.