A guide to recent trends in green applications of liquid phase microextraction for bioanalytical sample preparations

Abstract

Liquid phase microextraction (LPME) techniques have become increasingly important components for bio-analytical sample preparation methods due to the versatility, adaptability, sensitivity, and conformity to green analytical chemistry (GAC) principles that they provide for the analyses of complex biological matrices. Despite having been used for sample preparations for some 25 years, LPME is not a static sample preparation field, but is continuously undergoing innovation and improvements and new research and applications for bio-analytical sample preparation are being published constantly. This review is meant to serve not only as a listing of recent literature, but as a guide to current trends in LPME. In order to fully understand the trends, advantages and limitations of this field in bio-analytical sample analyses, LPME based methods are compared with traditional sample preparation methods, the limitations and advantages of each LPME mode examined, and a variety of reviews and successful applications papers for LPME are included. To simplify searching for appropriate LPME methods these reviews and applications have been categorized to aid in searching for a needed application technique or publication. Following sections briefly cover the trends in LPME development, concentrating on bioanalytical sample preparation applications. The review continues with an examination of the trends for the use use of non-traditional green solvents for LPME based methods, and concludes with a discussion of recent innovations which have the potential for commercialization of high throughput automation for LPME based bio-analytical sample preparation and analysis methods.