Correction: Synthesis of a monodisperse well-defined core–shell magnetic molecularly-imprinted polymer prior to LC-MS/MS for fast and sensitive determination of mycotoxin residues in rice

Abstract

Correction for ‘Synthesis of a monodisperse well-defined core–shell magnetic molecularly-imprinted polymer prior to LC-MS/MS for fast and sensitive determination of mycotoxin residues in rice’ by Sheng-Dong Pan et al., Anal. Methods, 2017, 9, 5281–5292.

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The authors apologise that parts of the data presented in Fig. 3 are incorrect.

The authors have repeated the experiments to provide replacement data for Fig. 3(f), (h), (i) and Table 2. The accuracy and integrity of the new data has been confirmed by the Director of the Ningbo Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The new figures have been reviewed by an expert and are provided below in order to fulfil the journal’s responsibility to correct the scientific record, in accordance with the guidelines provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This correction does not alter the conclusions presented in this Analytical Methods paper.

This correction supersedes the information provided in the Expression of Concern related to this article.

The original version of Fig. 3(f) had been inappropriately modified using Photoshop technology to make the image more appealing. The authors apologise for this and understand that any type of image manipulation is not acceptable.

In addition, Fig. 3(h) and the related discussion contained some errors in the original article. The original XRD characterization data was sent to a third party as the authors did not know how to convert the original data into the XRD graphs. The original data may have been confused with other materials during the process of data transfer. The authors admit that they did not carefully check the obtained results with the original XRD data.

The newly prepared batches of MD-CS-MMIP-1, MD-CS-MMIP-2 and MD-CS-MMIP-3 were characterized by various techniques, and were found to be very similar to the original data. However, the TGA characterization results indicated that the weight loss temperature of oleic acid in newly prepared MD-CS-MMIP-2 and MD-CS-MMIP-3 shifted to ∼650 °C, while the original data was ∼705 °C. The authors wish to replace the TGA data in Fig. 3(i) and Table 2 with the new results.

The corrected version of Fig. 3(f), (h), (i) and Table 2 and the corrected text are shown here.

Fig. 1 (f) The SEM of core–shell MD-CS-MMIP; (h) XRD images; (i) TGA of as-synthesized materials.

Table 1 TG-DTG data for MD-CS-MMIP

MD-CS-MMIP	T 1 (°C)	TG1 (%)	T 2 (°C)	TG2 (%)	T 3 (°C)	TG3 (%)
MD-CS-MMIP-1	304.7	14.9	381.7–411.7	40.1	—	—
MD-CS-MMIP-2	283.3	19.9	375.3–416.3	36.8	655.3	5.45
MD-CS-MMIP-3	305.5	21.2	382.5–415.5	33.4	651.5	7.82

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Page 5284 (right column), paragraph 2: “Furthermore, a broad peak with 2θ at 16.6° was also observed for MD-CS-MMIP, which revealed the successful formation of the amorphous structure of the polymers on the Fe₃O₄ surface”.

Page 5284 (right column), paragraph 3: “As listed in Table 2, the weight loss due to the decomposition of carboxyl groups (–COOH) increased from 14.9% to 21.2% with the usage amount of oleic acid increasing from 0 to 10.0 mL for MD-CS-MMIP preparation, which revealed that well-defined monodisperse MD-CSMMIP-3 was beneficial for functionalization and molecular imprinting. Moreover, the weight loss resulting from the decomposition of oleic acid at 600–750 °C also increased from 0 to 7.82%, and no weight loss occurred in this temperature region for the MD-CS-MMIP-1”.

The Royal Society of Chemistry apologises for these errors and any consequent inconvenience to authors and readers.

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