Novel molecular imprinted polymers over magnetic mesoporous silica microspheres for selective and efficient determination of protocatechuic acid in Syzygium aromaticum

•Preparation of Fe3O4@mSiO2@MIPs with excellent recognition ability.•High surface area of mesoporous material increased binding capacity.•The composites combined the advantages of Fe3O4, mSiO2 and MIPs.•Fast, efficient and selective extraction of PCA from complex matrix. Improving sites accessibility can increase the binding efficiency of molecular imprinted polymers (MIPs). In this work, we firstly synthesized MIPs over magnetic mesoporous silica microspheres (Fe3O4@mSiO2@MIPs) for the selective recognition of protocatechuic acid (PCA). The resulting Fe3O4@mSiO2@MIPs were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), and vibration sample magnetometer (VSM), and evaluated by adsorption isotherms/kinetics and competitive adsorption. The maximum adsorption capacity of PCA on Fe3O4@mSiO2@MIPs was 17.2mg/g (2.3 times that on Fe3O4@SiO2@MIPs). In addition, Fe3O4@mSiO2@MIPs showed a short equilibrium time (140min), rapid magnetic separation (5s) and high stability (retained 94.4% after six cycles). Subsequently, Fe3O4@mSiO2@MIPs were successfully applied for the selective and efficient determination of PCA (29.3μg/g) from Syzygium aromaticum. Conclusively, we combined three advantages into Fe3O4@mSiO2@MIPs, namely, Fe3O4 core for quick separation, mSiO2 layer for enough accessible sites, and surface imprinting MIPs for fast binding and excellent selectivity, to extract PCA from complex systems.