Covalent triazine framework-1 as adsorbent for inline solid phase extraction-high performance liquid chromatographic analysis of trace nitroimidazoles in porcine liver and environmental waters

•Covalent triazine framework-1 (CTF-1) was used for nitroimidazole extraction.•CTF-1 has high extraction efficiency (87%-98%) and adsorption capacity.•In-line SPE-HPLC was developed for the analysis of nitroimidazoles with low LODs.•CTF-1 was suitable for aromatic compounds in environmental and biological samples.

In this study, covalent triazine framework-1 (CTF-1) was adopted as solid phase extraction (SPE) sorbents, and a method of SPE inline coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet (HPLC-UV) detection was developed for trace analysis of three nitroimidazolaes (including metronidazole, ronidazole and dimetridazole) in porcine liver and environmental water samples. CTF-1 has rich π-electron and N containing triazine, thus can form π-π interaction and intermolecular hydrogen bond with three target polar nitroimidazoles, resulting in high extraction efficiency (87%-98%). Besides, CTF-1 has large specific area, which benefits rapid mass transfer and low column pressure, leading to fast adsorption/desorption dynamics. Several parameters affecting inline SPE including pH, sample flow rate, sample volume, desorption reagents, elution flow rate, elution volume, and ionic strength were investigated. Under the optimal experimental conditions, the limits of detection (S/N = 3) were found to be in the range of 0.11-0.13 μg/L. The enrichment factors (EFs) ranged from 52 to 59 fold (theoretical EF was 60-fold). The relative standard deviations were in the range of 4.3-9.4% (n = 7, c = 1 μg/L), and the linear range was 0.5-500 μg/L for three target analytes. The sample throughput is 7/h. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of nitroimidazoles in porcine liver and environmental water samples with good recoveries for the spiked samples.