Polydimethylsiloxane/covalent triazine frameworks coated stir bar sorptive extraction coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection for the determination of phenols in environmental water samples

• PDMS/covalent triazine frameworks (CTFs) coated stir bar was prepared by sol–gel technique.
• The preparation of PDMS/CTFs coated stir bars is simple and reproducible.
• PDMS/CTFs exhibit better extraction efficiency than commercial PEG and PDMS for phenols.
• PDMS/CTFs SBSE exhibits good application potential for polar OH-containing compounds.

In this work, covalent triazine frameworks (CTFs) were introduced in stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) and a novel polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS)/CTFs stir bar coating was prepared by sol–gel technique for the sorptive extraction of eight phenols (including phenol, 2-chlorophenol, 2-nitrophenol, 4-nitrophenol, 2,4-dimethylphenol, p-chloro-m-cresol and 2,4-dichlorophenol, 2,4,6-trichlorophenol) from environmental water samples followed by high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet (HPLC-UV) detection. The prepared PDMS/CTFs coated stir bar showed good preparation reproducibility with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) ranging from 3.5 to 5.7% (n = 7) in one batch, and from 3.7 to 9.3% (n = 7) among different batches. Several parameters affecting SBSE of eight target phenols including extraction time, stirring rate, sample pH, ionic strength, desorption solvent and desorption time were investigated. Under the optimal experimental conditions, the limits of detection (LODs, S/N = 3) were found to be in the range of 0.08–0.30 μg/L. The linear range was 0.25–500 μg/L for 2-nitrophenol, 0.5–500 μg/L for phenol, 2-chlorophenol, 4-nitrophenol as well as 2,4-dimethylphenol, and 1–500 μg/L for p-chloro-m-cresol, 2,4-dichlorophenol as well as 2,4,6-trichlorophenol, respectively. The intra-day relative standard deviations (RSDs) were in the range of 4.3–9.4% (n = 7, c = 2 μg/L) and the enrichment factors ranged from 64.9 to 145.6 fold (theoretical enrichment factor was 200-fold). Compared with commercial PDMS coated stir bar (Gerstel) and PEG coated stir bar (Gerstel), the prepared PDMS/CTFs stir bar showed better extraction efficiency for target phenol compounds. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of phenols in environmental water samples and good relative recoveries were obtained with the spiking level at 2, 10, 50 μg/L, respectively.