Optically transparent chitosan hydrogels for selective sorption and fluorometric determination of dibenzothiophenes.

Solid-phase extraction of polycyclic aromatic sulfur heterocycles (PASHs) and their rapid determination in oil fuel without tedious sample pretreatment are of high interest. We propose porous and optically transparent hydrogels prepared from the covalently crosslinked chitosan (CS) as the basis for a sensor system for the rapid and robust monitoring of PASHs. We efficiently combined the ability of the crosslinked CS to sorb PASHs, the capacity of microcavities in a molecularly imprinted polymer to selectively recognize and trap analytes, and the optical transparency of CS materials for selective sorption and solid-phase fluorometric determination of dibenzothiophenes. For the screening of PASHs in organic nonpolar media, ortho-phtalic dialdehyde appeared to be the most appropriate crosslinker. Synthetic and analytical procedures performed in microplate mode allowed obtaining CS hydrogels with suitable reproducible properties and their further time- and labor-efficient applying in analysis (particularly, as little as 2 μM dibenzothiophene oxide can be determined).