An etched stainless steel wire/ionic liquid-solid phase microextraction technique for the determination of alkylphenols in river water

•We developed an etched stainless steel wire/ionic liquid-solid phase microextraction.•No sample pre-treatment required.•Extraction parameters were examined in our study.•Comparable efficiency with commercial PA fibre for the analysis of APs in water samples.•This technique is efficient and convenient for extraction of APs from water sample.

In this study, a stainless steel wire/ionic liquid-solid phase microextraction technique was developed for the direct extraction of APs from water samples. Some parameters were optimised, such as selection of the substrate and ILs, extraction time, extraction temperature, stirring rate and sample pH, etc. The experimental data demonstrated that the etched stainless steel wire was a suitable substrate for IL-coated SPME. The coating was prepared by directly depositing the ILs onto the surface of the etched stainless steel wire, which exhibited a porous structure and a high surface area. The [C8MIM][PF6] IL exhibited maximum efficiency with an extraction time of 30 min, and the aqueous sample was maintained at 40 °C and adjusted to pH 2 under stirring conditions. The enrichment factor of the IL coating for the four APs ranged from 1382 to 4779, the detection limits (LOD, S/N=3) of the four APs ranged from 0.01 to 0.04 ng mL−1 and the RSD values for purified water spiked with APs ranged from 4.0 to 11.8% (n=3). The calibration graphs were linear in the concentration range from 0.5 to 200 ng mL−1 (R2>0.9569). The optimised method was successfully applied for the analysis of real water samples, and the method was suitable for the extraction of APs from water samples.

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