New Polymeric Materials for Solid Phase Extraction

Solid phase extraction (SPE) is a popular sample preparation technique, which can be applied directly in gas-solid phase and liquid-solid phase, or indirectly to solid samples by using, e.g., thermodesorption with subsequent chromatographic analysis. Although SPE can be described as a physical extraction process involving a liquid phase and a solid phase, the increased use of packed sorbent formats seems to have led to a bias toward packed sorbent SPE devices. Without any doubt, the heart of the SPE technique is the sorbent material as it has a direct influence on the selectivity, sorptive capacity, and the format or the configuration of the resultant SPE device. There will always be a need for new sorbent materials, and therefore, it is imperative to focus research efforts on versatile sorbent fabrication techniques that could address current and anticipated challenges. Various polymeric materials have been developed and implemented in everyday life. They are also extensively used in analytical chemistry. This review provides an updated summary of the most important features of polymeric sorptive materials used at the stage of preparing samples for analysis. The application of each new polymeric sorbent material is discussed in detail. Moreover, the comparison between these materials is done.