Adsorptive behavior and solid-phase microextraction of bare stainless steel sample loop in high performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

In this work, we interestingly happened to observe the adsorption of stainless steel sample loop of HPLC. The adsorptive behaviors of the stainless steel loop toward different kinds of compounds were studied, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), halogeno benzenes, aniline derivatives, benzoic acid derivatives, phenols, benzoic acid ethyl ester, benzaldehyde, 1-phenyl-ethanone and phenethyl alcohol. The adsorptive mechanism was probably related to hydrophobic interaction, electron-rich element–metal interaction and hydrogen bond. Universal adsorption of stainless steels was also testified. Inspired by its strong adsorptive capability, bare stainless steel loop was developed as a modification-free in-tube device for solid-phase microextraction (SPME), which served as both the substrate and sorbent and possessed ultra-high strength and stability. Great extraction efficiency toward PAHs was obtained by stainless steel loop without any modification, with enrichment factors of 651–834. By connecting the stainless steel loop onto a six-port valve, an online SPME–HPLC system was set up and an SPME–HPLC method has been validated for determination of PAHs. The method has exceptionally low limits of detection of 0.2–2pg/mL, which is significantly lower than that of reported methods with different kinds of sorbents. Wide linear range (0.5–500 and 2–1000pg/mL), good linearity (R2≥0.9987) and good reproducibility (RSD≤2.9%) were also obtained. The proposed method has been applied to determine PAHs in environmental samples. Good recoveries were obtained, ranging from 88.5% to 93.8%.