A porous layer open tubular monolith on microstructured optical fibre for microextraction and online GC-MS applications

Abstract

A microextraction device comprising a porous layer open tubular (PLOT) polymer housed in a microstructured optical fiber has been shown to be an attractive tool for analyte extraction and coupling to GC-MS as a cost-effective alternative to traditional SPME. This paper details the fabrication of a poly(styrene-co-divinylbenzene) PLOT optical fibre microextraction device and its use in the extraction of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in aqueous solution. Good linear calibrations were obtained with R 2 values above 0.970 for five PAHs analyzed, with percent relative standard deviation values of 22.2 to 43.6% for PAH standards with concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 100 ppm. In addition, the robust poly(styrene-co-DVB) PLOT optical fibre porous polymer microextraction (PPME) device appears to retain its effectiveness with repeated use over an extended period of time.

Wall modified photonic crystal fibre capillaries as porous layer open tubular columns for in-capillary micro-extraction and capillary chromatography

“…Figure 3 shows the high resolution images of these modified um channels, illustrating the excellent uniformity of the polymer layer between channels and the successful wall bonding of the PS-DVB phase. Indeed, these results are a substantial improvement on the work published by Mugo et al who commented upon their imperfect modification, with some channels fully filled with monolith and others only partially modified [24]. Herein, to fully confirm the longitudinal uniformity, a newly fabricated FS-PCF was cut into 10 individual sections, at 2 cm intervals, and each imaged using SEM.…”

“…These capillary formats are available with channel dimensions in the single digit micron range (e.g. 4 m) and below, and therefore offer the potential for the development of both selective micro-extraction capillaries and PLOT capillary columns for liquid chromatographic separations, similar to those obtained using conventional micro-bore PLOT capillary columns [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…Some preliminary applications within capillary electrophoresis, for the separations of dye labeled peptides and DNA [26,28], and as multi-channel electrospray emitters in MS [22], have been reported. In addition, a recent application of wall modified FS-PCFs for extraction purposes has been described, specifically polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) extraction with subsequent separation using GC-MS [24]. However, the method reports simple adsorption of solutes into the end of the capillary only, and no in-capillary extraction or flow through extraction is explored or described.…”

“…The production of uniform bonded porous polymer layers within each of the parallel channels is technically challenging but may provide the appropriate stationary phase for both application as an extraction and/or separation phase. Some previous work by Fu et al [23] and Bachus et al [30] has been reported using FS-PCFs as templates for fabricating nanotubes, wires and porous monoliths [24], however none of these examples have been applied or investigated with regard to liquid chromatographic performance. For the protein digest separations, an Agilent pump (Santa Clara, CA, USA)…”