Preparation of a biomimetic ionic liquids hybrid polyphosphorylcholine monolithic column for the high efficient capillary microextraction of glycopeptide antibiotics

An ionic liquid hybrid zwitterionic polymer capillary microextraction (CME) column was prepared for the biomimetic enrichment of glycopeptides by one-step copolymerization of 2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine (MPC) and 1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium bromide, in the presence of crosslinker trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate (TMA). The resultant monolith was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and pore size distribution measurement. Due to the incorporation of zwitterionic MPC owning a unique biomimic structure (i.e. hydrophilic cation/anion and hydrophobic long-alkyl chain), the monolithic column has large pore size and good biocompatibility, exhibiting high extraction efficiency, permeability and fast mass transfer to targets. Besides, the use of ionic liquids (ILs) as co-monomer in the polymerization endows the monolith with enhanced mechanical stability, uniformity and multiple interactions. The prepared column was successfully applied in CME coupled to capillary electrochromatography (CEC) for the efficient enrichment and separation of glycopeptide antibiotics in foodstuff. The method demonstrated a wide linear range (50.0-18000.0 µg L-1), low detection limits (5.0-10.0 µg L-1, S/N = 3) and satisfied recoveries (76.0-109.7%). This work shows the advantage of fine-tuning biomimetic monoliths in application-specific CME-CEC.