Boric acids decorated polymers with Au nanoparticle anchor assisted laser desorption/ionization for qualitive and quantitative analysis of hydroxytyrosol in red wines

Hydroxytyrosol possesses a variety of biological and pharmacological activities that are beneficial to human health. However, the methodologies for its detection always suffered from problems. In this work, the gold nanoparticle modified polymer decorated with boric acids (pMBA/VPBA@Au) was synthesized and used both as the adsorbent and matrix to enrich and ionize small molecule substances through surface-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (SALDI-MS). The pMBA/VPBA@Au displayed a low detection limit (8 x 10-6 M) and high selectivity (1:100) for the enrichment of hydroxytyrosol, and the linear correlation curve between the concentration of hydroxytyrosol and the intensity of MS had a good correlation (10-4-10-2 M, R2 = 0.997). Additionally, the pMBA/VPBA@Au was used to quantify hydroxytyrosol in red wines, and the contents were 0.053-0.094 mu g/mL. In general, a simple and novel method for the detection of hydroxytyrosol by SALDIMS using boric acid functionalized polymer was developed for the first time, showing a good practical application value.