Analysis of aldehydes in human exhaled breath condensates by in-tube SPME-HPLC

• A novel PPy/G coating was fabricated for on-line in-tube SPME.
• The coating exhibited excellent stability, lifespan, extraction capacity and selectivity.
• Good results were obtained for sensitivity, precision, accuracy, speed and matrix effect.
• The method was applied in non-invasive breath analysis.

In this paper, polypyrrole/graphene (PPy/G) composite coating was prepared by a facile electrochemical polymerization strategy on the inner surface of a stainless steel (SS) tube. Based on the coating tube, a novel online in-tube solid-phase microextraction -high performance liquid chromatography (IT-SPME-HPLC) was developed and applied for the extraction of aldehydes in the human exhaled breath condensates (EBC). The hybrid PPy/G nanocomposite exhibits remarkable chemical and mechanical stability, high selectivity, and satisfactory extraction performance toward aldehyde compounds. Moreover, the proposed online IT-SPME-HPLC method possesses numerous superiorities, such as time and cost saving, process simplicity, high precision and sensitivity. Some parameters related to extraction efficiency were optimized systematically. Under the optimal conditions, the recoveries of the aldehyde compounds at three spiked concentration levels varied in the range of 85%–117%. Good linearity was obtained with excellent correlation coefficients (R2) being larger than 0.994. The relative standard deviations (n = 5) of the method ranged from 1.8% to 11.3% and the limits of detection were between 2.3 and 3.3 nmol L−1. The successful application of the proposed method in human EBC indicated that it is a promising approach for the determination of trace aldehyde metabolites in complex EBC samples.

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