An all-in-one electro-membrane extraction: Development of an electro-membrane extraction method for the simultaneous extraction of acidic and basic drugs with a wide range of polarities

• All-in-one electro-membrane extraction for simultaneous extraction of drugs.
• Simultaneous extraction of acidic and basic drugs with wide ranging polarities.
• Four hollow fibers were used as acceptor phases.
• An efficient separation was obtained with capillary electrophoresis.
• Determination of drugs in urine samples from drug-using suspects.

Efficient and simultaneous extraction of a series of basic and acidic compounds with a large polarity range using only a single run of electro-membrane extraction (EME) has been a challenge. To overcome this difficulty, in this work, a new EME setup was developed for the determination of basic and acidic model drugs with different polarities using two auxiliary electrodes (one as the cathode and the other as the anode) and their circumferential hollow fibers impregnated with organic solvent compositions different from those of main hollow fibers, coupled with capillary electrophoresis (CE). Satisfactory analytical figures of merit including limits of quantification (15–45 ng mL−1), good preconcentration factors (66–132) and recoveries (33–66%) were obtained by the proposed EME-CE/UV (detection at 214 nm) procedure. Finally, the applicability of this method was evaluated by the extraction and determination of the drugs in urine samples from drug-using suspects.