Preparation and characterization of porous carbon material-coated solid-phase microextraction metal fibers

Two kinds of porous carbon materials, including carbon aerogels (CAs), wormhole-like mesoporous carbons (WMCs), were synthesized and used as the coatings of solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibers. By using stainless steel wire as the supporting core, six types of fibers were prepared with sol–gel method, direct coating method and direct coating plus sol–gel method. Headspace SPME experiments indicated that the extraction efficiencies of the CA fibers are better than those of the WMC fibers, although the surface area of WMCs is much higher than that of CAs. The sol–gel–CA fiber (CA-A) exhibited excellent extraction properties for non-polar compounds (BTEX, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene), while direct-coated CA fiber (CA-B) presented the best performance in extracting polar compounds (phenols). The two CA fibers showed wide linear ranges, low detection limits (0.008–0.047 μg L−1 for BTEX, 0.15–5.7 μg L−1 for phenols) and good repeatabilities (RSDs less than 4.6% for BTEX, and less than 9.5% for phenols) and satisfying reproducibilities between fibers (RSDs less than 5.2% for BTEX, and less than 9.9% for phenols). These fibers were successfully used for the analysis of water samples from the Pearl River, which demonstrated the applicability of the home-made CA fibers.