Poly(o-anisidine)/graphene oxide nanosheets composite as a coating for the headspace solid-phase microextraction of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes

•A novel nanocomposite made of PoA and GONSs is electrochemically prepared.•This nanocomposite is prepared for the first time on stainless steel wire.•The extraction capability of the nanocomposite is examined towards BTEX.

A poly(o-anisidine)/graphene oxide nanosheets (PoA/GONSs) coating is fabricated by a simple and efficient electrochemical deposition method on steel wire. The incorporation of PoA and GONSs allows preparing a nanocomposite that can successfully integrate the advantages of both. Then, the prepared fiber is applied to the headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and gas chromatographic analysis of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes. In order to obtain an adherent, stable and efficient fiber to extract target analytes, experimental parameters related to the coating process such as deposition potential, deposition time, concentration of the monomer and concentration of GONSs were studied. The prepared composite fiber were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The effect of various parameters on the efficiency of HS-SPME process consisting of desorption temperature and time, extraction temperature and time and ionic strength were also optimized. Under the optimal conditions, the method was linear for orders of magnitude with correlation coefficients varying from 0.9888 to 0.9993. Intra- and inter-day precisions of the method were determined from mixed aqueous solutions containing 5.0 ng mL−1 of each BTEX. The intra-day precisions varied from 3.1% for toluene to 5.7% for ethylbenzene, while the inter-day precisions varied from 4.9% for o-xylene to 7.3% for m,p-xylene. Limits of detection were in the range 0.01–0.06 ng mL−1. The proposed method was applied to monitor BTEX compounds in some water samples and the accuracies found through spiking river water samples showed high recoveries between 92.0 and 101.2%.