dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction coupled with magnetic nanoparticles for extraction of zearalenone in wheat samples

A new, sensitive and fast dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (dllme) coupled with micro-solid phase extraction (μ-spe) was developed for determination of zearalenone (zen) in wheat samples. the dllme was performed using acetonitrile/water (80:20 v/v) as the disperser solvent and 1-octanol as the extracting solvent. the acetonitrile/water (80:20 v/v) solvent was also used to extract zen from solid wheat matrix, and was directly applied as the disperser solvent for dllme process. additionally, hydrophobic oleic-acid-modified magnetic nanoparticles were used in μ-spe approach to retrieve the analyte from the dllme step. so, the method uses high surface area and strong magnetism properties of these nanoparticles to avoid timeconsuming column-passing processes in traditional spe. main parameters affecting the extraction efficiency and signal enhancement were investigated and optimized. under the optimum conditions, the calibration curve showed a good linearity in the range of 0.1-500 μg kg^−1 (r²=0.9996) with low detection limit of 83 ng g^−1. the intra-day and inter-day precisions (as rsd %) in the range of 2.6-4.3 % and high recoveries ranging from 91.6 to 99.1 % were obtained. the pre-concentration factor was 3. the method is simple, inexpensive, accurate and remarkably free from interference effects.