Porous polymer monoliths for extraction: diverse applications and platforms

Polymer monoliths are becoming increasingly popular as sorbent materials, and, along with silica monoliths, they are sometimes touted as replacements for the particulate stationary phases used in HPLC. This critical and prospective review shows how polymer monoliths are in fact finding numerous extraction roles that do not resemble HPLC. They are showing great promise as extractors in a remarkable range of platforms, formats and hyphenated systems with functions ranging from chromatographic preconcentration to large-scale preparative extraction. Monolith surface chemistry, morphology and the approaches to monolith synthesis are discussed with regards to these emerging roles.