Molecularly imprinted polymer microspheres for optical measurement of ultra trace nonfluorescent cyhalothrin in honey

In this study, we first present a general protocol for making fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymer microspheres via precipitation polymerisation. We first prepared the fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymer microspheres upon copolymerisation of acrylamide with a small quantity of allyl fluorescein in the presence of cyhalothrin to form recognition sites without doping. The as-synthesised microspheres exhibited spherical shape, high fluorescence intensity and highly selective recognition. Under optical conditions, polymer microspheres were successfully applied to selectively and sensitively detect cyhalothrin, and a linear relationship could be obtained covering the lower concentration range of 0–1.0 nM with a correlation coefficient of 0.9936 described by the Stern–Volmer equation. A lower limit of detection was found to be 0.004 nM. The results of practical detection suggested that the developed method was satisfactory for determination of cyhalothrin in honey samples. This study therefore demonstrated the potential of molecularly imprinted polymers for detection of cyhalothrin in food.