Hierarchical Mesoporous Metal–Organic Frameworks with Boric Acid Sites on the Inner Surface of Small Mesopores for the Extraction of Nucleotides in Human Plasma Samples
Yidong Xu, Yao Sun, Zewei Yao, Yinmao Wei
Abstract
In this work, a boronate affinity-functionalized hierarchical mesoporous metal–organic framework adsorbent with boronate sites only in the small mesopore has been structured based on UiO-66@Fe 3 O 4 . The introduction of large mesopores in the adsorbent can promote the diffusion of small cis -diol-containing compounds ( cis -diols) into small mesopore channels, and the removal of the adsorption sites on the external surface of materials and in large mesopores can enhance the size-exclusion effect of the adsorbent. In addition, the adsorbent has faster adsorption kinetics and excellent selectivity to small cis -diols. Finally, a magnetic dispersive solid-phase extraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography was established for the enrichment and detection of nucleotides in plasma. Four nucleotides achieve the recoveries from 93.25 to 118.79%, the limits of detection from 0.35 to 1.26 ng·mL –1, and the intra-day and inter-day relative standard deviations of less than 10.2%. In conclusion, this method can be directly used for the detection of small cis -diol targets in complex biological samples without protein precipitation prior to the extraction.