Ordered mesoporous carbon/Nafion as a versatile and selective solid-phase microextraction coating

• Highly ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) was synthesized.
• The as-synthesized OMC was of high surface area and uniform mesoporous structure.
• The OMC was prepared as an SPME coating using Nafion as a binder.
• The OMC/Nafion coating exhibited excellent extraction selectivity towards aromatic compounds.

In this study, ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) with large surface area (1019 m2 g−1), uniform mesoporous structure (pore size distribution centering at 4.2 nm) and large pore volume (1.46 cm3 g−1) was synthesized using 2D hexagonally mesoporous silica MSU-H as the hard template and sucrose as the carbon precursor. The as-synthesized OMC was immobilized onto a stainless steel wire using Nafion as a binder to prepare an OMC/Nafion solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coating. The extraction characteristics of the OMC/Nafion coating were extensively investigated using a wide range of analytes including non-polar (light petroleum and benzene homologues) and polar compounds (amines and phenols). The OMC/Nafion coating exhibited much better extraction efficiency towards all selected analytes than that of a multi-walled carbon nanotubes/Nafion coating with similar length and thickness, which is ascribed to its high surface area, well-ordered mesoporous structure and large pore volume. When the OMC/Nafion coating was used to extract a mixture containing various kinds of analytes, it possessed excellent extraction selectivity towards aromatic non-polar compounds. In addition, the feasibility of the OMC/Nafion coating for application in electrochemically enhanced SPME was demonstrated using protonated amines as model analytes.