A needle trap device packed with a sol–gel derived, multi-walled carbon nanotubes/silica composite for sampling and analysis of volatile organohalogen compounds in air

•MWCNTs/silica composite was prepared based on sol–gel technology and used with NTD.•NTD with proposed sorbent used for sampling of HVOCs for the first time reported.•Proposed sorbent showed good performance with compare to the PDMS in NTD.•NTD with proposed sorbent had good performance with compare to the SPME-CAR/PDMS.•NTD is a good occupational/environmental assessment technique for HVOCs in air.

A needle trap device (NTD) packed with silica composite of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) prepared based on sol–gel technique was utilized for sampling and analysis of volatile organohalogen compounds (HVOCs) in air. The performance of the NTD packed with MWCNTs/silica composite as sorbent was examined in a variety of sampling conditions and was compared with NTDs packed with PDMS as well as SPME with Carboxen/PDMS-coated fibers. The limit of detection of NTDs for the GC/MS detection system was 0.01–0.05 ng mL−1 and the limit of quantitation was 0.04–0.18 ng mL−1. The RSD were 1.1–7.8% for intra-NTD comparison intended for repeatability of technique. The NTD-MWCNTs/silica composite showed better analytical performances compared to the NTD-PDMS composite and had the same analytical performances when compared to the SPME-Carboxen/PDMS fibers. The results show that NTD-MWCNTs-GC/MS is a powerful technique for active sampling of occupational/environmental pollutants in air.

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