Ionic liquid based dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction coupled with micro-solid phase extraction of antidepressant drugs from environmental water samples

• A novel and fast preconcentration approach, IL-DLLME-VA-μ-SPE was developed for antidepressant drugs in water.
• The μ-SPE step was preceded by fast sonication-assisted DLLME.
• Simple and efficient method with low LODs, good linearity and repeatability.

Ionic liquid-dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction combined with micro-solid phase extraction (IL-DLLME-μ-SPE), and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was developed for the determination of tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) in water samples. Two hundred microliters of an organic solvent (as disperser solvent) and 20 μl of 1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium tris(pentafluoroethyl)trifluorophosphate were injected into a 5.0 ml sample for sonication-assisted DLLME. After this, a μ-SPE device, containing a novel material zeolite imidazolate framework 4 (ZIF-4), was added into the sample solution and 1 min of vortex-assisted extraction was performed. After 5 min of sonication-assisted desorption, 10 μl of desorption solvent was injected into a HPLC system for analysis. A characteristic property of DLLME-VA-μ-SPE is that any organic solvent and solid sorbent immiscible with water can be used. Special apparatus, or conical-bottom test tubes, and tedious procedures conventionally associated with DLLME such as centrifugation, or refrigeration of solvent are not necessary in the present approach. A novel material, ZIF-4 was employed as μ-SPE sorbent. Under the optimized conditions, the calibration curves were linear in the range of 1–1000 μg/L. The relative standard deviations and the limits of detection were in the range of 1.5% and 7.8% and 0.3 and 1 μg/L, respectively. The relative recoveries of canal water samples, spiked with drugs, were in the range of 94.3% and 114.7%. The results showed that IL-DLLME-μ-SPE was suitable for the determination of TCAs in water samples.