Facile synthesis of hierarchically flower-like hollow covalent organic frameworks for enrichment and metabolic analysis of benzophenone derivatives in mouse serum

Abstract

Benzophenone derivatives (BPs), as synthetic chemicals widely used in personal care products, have drawn increasing attention due to their potential health risks. However, monitoring BPs in biological samples remains challenging due to their complex matrices and the deficiency in sensitivity and selectivity in current methods. Herein, a method combining hierarchically flower-like hollow covalent organic frameworks (HFH-COFs) with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) was established for the enrichment and detection of BPs in serum samples. The HFH-COFs were synthesized at room temperature and employed as an adsorbent due to their advantageous properties. The as-prepared HFH-COFs exhibited high specific surface area (2286.53 m²/g), excellent chemical stability, and good thermal stability, making them ideal for efficient enrichment applications. Under optimized experimental conditions, five BPs were effectively enriched and quantified by HPLC-MS/MS in the range of 50.0–5000.0 ng/L with good linearity (r > 0.9992). The limit of detections was 0.5–10.0 ng/L. Furthermore, HFH-COFs showed high enrichment factors even over multiple adsorption-desorption cycles. This study proposed a reliable and efficient method for monitoring endocrine-disrupting compounds in complex biological samples and highlighted the potential of HFH-COFs as a superior adsorbent material for BP.