In situ hydrothermal growth of ZnO/g-C3N4 nanoflowers coated solid-phase microextraction fibers coupled with GC-MS for determination of pesticides residues

•A new ZnO/g-C3N4-coated fiber is synthesized by in situ hydrothermal method.•The fiber was used for SPME to detect pesticide residues.•The fiber showed wide linear range and low detection limit for the detection of pesticides.

In this paper, Zinc oxide (ZnO) hybridized with graphite-like C3N4 (ZnO/g-C3N4) nanoflowers based solid phase microextraction (SPME) coating was prepared on fiber using in situ hydrothermal growth method for gas chromatographic -mass spectrum (GC- MS) separation and analysis target analytes in complex matrixes for the first time. The proposed hybrid ZnO/g-C3N4 fiber exhibited wide linearity for the pesticide residues in range of 0.003–5.0 ng mL−1. The limits of detection (LOD) were 0.001–0.0025 ng mL−1. The relative standard deviation (RSD) for three replicate extractions using one fiber was ranged from 2.3% to 7.6%. The fiber to fiber RSD was 5.3–11.3% (n = 3). This method was successfully used for simultaneous determination of nine pesticide residues in cucumber, pear, Green tea and Minjiang water with satisfactory recoveries of 79.1–103.5%. These results indicated that the ZnO/g-C3N4 composite provided a promising alternative in sample pretreatment and analysis.

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