Mesoporous silica hybridized by ordered mesoporous carbon for in-tube solid-phase microextraction

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Materials Science

Background:

• Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is a widely used technique for sample preparation.
• Enhancing the extraction efficiency and selectivity of SPME materials is crucial for trace analysis.
• Mesoporous materials offer high surface area and tunable pore structures for improved adsorption.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel extraction material by combining mesoporous silica and ordered mesoporous carbon.
• To construct an online analytical system for enhanced extraction and detection.
• To evaluate the performance of the developed system for analyzing hydrophobic and hydrophilic organic pollutants.

Main Methods:

• Modification of mesoporous silica with ordered mesoporous carbon.
• Fabrication of a custom extraction tube using coated stainless-steel wires.
• Coupling the extraction tube to high-performance liquid chromatography with a diode array detector (HPLC-DAD).
• Optimization of key analytical parameters including sampling volume, sampling rate, methanol concentration, and desorption time.

Main Results:

• The developed material demonstrated superior selectivity for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
• An optimized online analytical method achieved a wide linear range (0.017–15 µg/L) with high correlation coefficients (>0.9990).
• The method exhibited low limits of detection (0.005–0.020 µg/L) and quantification (0.017–0.066 µg/L), with significant enrichment factors (377–2314).

Conclusions:

• The novel mesoporous silica-carbon composite material significantly enhances SPME performance.
• The established online HPLC-DAD method is rapid, sensitive, and selective for trace PAH determination.
• The method was successfully applied to detect PAHs in real water samples, demonstrating its practical applicability.