Fabrication of a polymeric composite incorporating metal-organic framework nanosheets for solid-phase microextraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from water samples

•A homogenously porous CBDC@polyimide-coated fiber was fabricated and characterized.•The fiber exhibited highly desired extraction performance towards PAHs.•The fiber was employed for the determination of PAHs in real aqueous samples.

In this contribution, it was discovered that even distribution of a metal-organic framework (MOF) [e.g. copper 1,4-benzenedicarboxylate (CBDC)] within polymeric matrixes (e.g. polyimide) resulted in a high-efficient coating material on the surface of a stainless steel wire (SSW). Consequently, a home-made solid phase microextraction (SPME) fiber was fabricated for fast determination of target analytes in real water samples. Scanning electron microscope images indicated that the coating possessed homogenously porous surface. Coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and direct immersion SPME (DI-SPME) technique, the fiber was evaluated through the analysis of five polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in aqueous samples. Under optimized extraction and desorption conditions, the established method based on the home-made fiber exhibited good repeatability (4.2-12.7%, n = 6) and reproducibility (0.9-11.7%, n = 3), low limits of detection (LODs, 0.11-2.10 ng L−1), low limits of quantification (LOQs, 0.36-6.99 ng L−1) and wide linear ranges (20-5000 ng L−1). Eventually, the method was proven applicable in the determination of PAHs in real samples, as the recoveries were in a satisfactory range (81.7-116%).

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