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Updated: May 27, 2026

Preparation of Highly Porous Coordination Polymer Coatings on Macroporous Polymer Monoliths for Enhanced Enrichment of Phosphopeptides
Published on: July 14, 2015
High-throughput polymer monolith in-tip SPME fiber preparation and application in drug analysis
Wei Xie1, Wayne Mullett, Janusz Pawliszyn
1Department of Drug Metabolism, Merck Research Laboratories, West Point, PA 19486, USA. wei_xie@merck.com
Background:
A simple, low-cost and reproducible automated procedure has been developed to prepare in-tip solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibers coated with polymer monoliths using a photopolymerization technique. Up to 96 fibers were prepared at one time using a polymerization mixture consisting of ethylene glycol dimethacrylate, dimethoxy-α-phenylacetophenone and 1-decanol.
Results:
The optimization procedures that affected polymer morphology, such as compositions of the crosslinkers and porogens, polymerization time and fiber thickness as well as extraction efficiency of the immobilized Oasis hydrophilic-lipophilic-balanced extraction sorbent were investigated. Also, the reproducibility of automated in-tip SPME fiber preparation, as well as sample process parameters, such as sample extraction and desorption volumes, are discussed.
Conclusion:
The performance of the polymer monoliths in-tip SPME assessed with a model drug compound from clinical studies and a head-to-head comparison using in-tip SPME and conventional SPE clearly demonstrated that the SPME is a feasible approach for routine drug analysis in the pharmaceutical industry.

