Nanomaterial-based magnetic surface molecularly imprinted polymers for specific extraction and efficient recognition of dibutyl phthalate

•Combining nanomaterials and surface molecular imprinting for SMIPs.•Taking modified magnetic nanospheres as the carrier to synthesize SMIPs.•Controllable morphology, thin blotting layer and less encapsulation.•Simpler preparation, stronger magnetic induction and lower cost of the SMIPs.•Eliminates cumbersome centrifugation steps and significantly reduces pre-concentration time. A rapid and selective sorbent for the enrichment of dibutyl phthalate (DBP) from water and Chinese Baijiu samples was established using magnetic surface molecularly imprinted polymers (MSMIPs) combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS). The MSMIPs were synthesized using a magnetic nanosphere material with silica layer, increasing the polymer surface area as a carrier. Compared with the traditional methods, the addition of magnetic microspheres simplified the process of food substrate purification and significantly shortened the pre-concentration time. The MSMIPs adsorption conforms to the Freundlich isotherm model as multilayer adsorption on an inhomogeneous surface and the pseudo-second-order model. The developed MSMIPs combined with GC-MS method showed good linearity in DBP concentration range of 0.02–1.0 mg L−1 with low LOD (0.0054 mg L−1) and LOQ (0.018 mg L−1), and obtained good recoveries in real samples (95.2–97.2%) with RSD