Weak anion-exchange hypercrosslinked sorbent in on-line solid-phase extraction–liquid chromatography coupling to achieve automated determination with an effective clean-up

A mixed-mode polymeric sorbent was on-line coupled to liquid chromatography (LC) for the first time and applied to the selective solid-phase extract a group of pharmaceuticals in complex environmental water samples. The mixed-mode polymeric sorbent is a high-specific surface area hypercrosslinked polymer resin (HXLPP) in the form of monodisperse microspheres further modified with 1,2-ethylenediamine (EDA) moieties. These properties allow its application as a weak anion-exchange (WAX) sorbent in the on-line solid-phase extraction (SPE) coupling. The on-line SPE-LC method developed using the HXLPP-WAX sorbent was successfully applied to percolate a large volume of ultrapure (500 ml), river (250 ml) and effluent sewage (100 ml) water samples. In all the cases, the HXLPP-WAX resin provided near total recoveries of the most acidic compounds studied and clean chromatograms. This is because the ion-exchange interactions enable a washing step to be added to the SPE protocol that removes the compounds with weak acidic, neutral and basic properties from the sample matrix.