New Generation of Solid-Phase Microextraction Coatings for Complementary Separation Approaches: A Step toward...

In this work, a new generation of solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coatings based on polytetrafluoroethylene amorphous fluoroplastics (PTFE AF 2400) as a particle binder is presented. The developed coating was tested for thermal and solvent-assisted desorption, demonstrating its compatibility with both gas- and liquid-chromatographic platforms. The incorporation of hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB) adsorptive particles provided optimal extraction coverage for analytes bearing a broad range of hydrophobicities and molecular weights and of varied chemical diversity. The performance of the newly developed coating was compared to already established coatings based on different polymers such as divinylbenzene/carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane (DVB/Car/PDMS) and octadecyl/benzenesulfonic acid/polyacrylonitrile (C18/SCX/PAN) in order to assess the new prototype versus the existing technology. As this is the first documented instance of PTFE AF being used as a particle immobilizer for SPME, an assessment of the analyte uptake rate and extraction capability of the developed coating was carried out in comparison to other conventionally used polymers. Moreover, the new SPME probes were used to validate an analytical method for determination of banned doping substances, achieving limits of quantitation below the minimum required performance limits (MRPLs) set by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for most compounds. Considering the broad coverage of the coating in terms of analytes extracted and its suitability for both thermal- and solvent-assisted desorption, these new SPME probes will properly suit various metabolomics applications that involve the use of both gas- and liquid-chromatography.