Fabrication of magnetic covalent organic framework for effective and selective solid-phase extraction of propylparaben from food samples

•Magnetic core-shell Fe3O4@COFs were fabricated as MSPE adsorbent.•Fe3O4@ DhaTab possessed fast and selective extraction of propylparaben.•Fe3O4@DhaTab-MSPE-HPLC method was validated and suitable for real sample analysis. Efficient magnetic solid phase extraction using crystalline porous polymers can find important applications in food safety. Herein, the core-shell Fe3O4@COFs nanospheres were synthesized by one-pot method and characterized in detail. The porous COF shell with large surface area had fast and selective adsorption for propylparaben via π-π, hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions. The extraction and desorption parameters were evaluated in detail. Under the optimized conditions, the extraction equilibrium was reached only in 5 min, the maximum adsorption capacity for propylparaben was 500 mg g−1 and the proposed Fe3O4@DhaTab-based-MSPE-HPLC-UV method afforded good linearity (4–20000 μg mL−1) with R2 (0.997), low limits of detection (0.55 μg L−1) and limits of quantification (1.5 μg L−1). Furthermore, the developed method was applied to determine propylparaben in soft drinks with the recoveries (97.0–98.3%) and relative standard deviations (0.61 to 3.75%). These results revealed the potential of Fe3O4@DhaTab as efficient adsorbents for parabens in food samples.