Silicone rod and silicone tube sorptive extraction

This review focuses on the applications of silicone in the form of tubes or rods for sorptive extraction of organic compounds as sample preparation method in combination with various chromatographic techniques. Silicone rods (SRs) and silicone tubes (STs) have the advantage of being inexpensive, flexible and robust. SRs and STs with different sizes and volumes of silicone (8–635 μL) have so far been applied for the extraction/preconcentration of a large variety of organic micropollutants from different matrices. The theoretical principle of SR and ST extraction in comparison with similar microextraction techniques is presented as well as a summary of the published applications of SR and ST extraction in combination with gas chromatography (GC) or liquid chromatography (LC). Furthermore, the use of SRs and STs for time-integrated (passive) sampling is reported.