Covalent organic framework derived porous carbon as effective coating for solid phase microextraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons prior to gas-chromatography mass spectrometry analysis

Abstract

In this work, covalent organic frameworks (COF) derived porous carbon was prepared through employing TpPa-1 as self-sacrificed template and used as solid phase microextraction (SPME) fiber coating. Owing to the high specific surface area and uniform pore size distribution, the resulting porous carbon exhibited excellent extraction ability toward PAHs. Coupled with gas-chromatography mass spectrometry (GC–MS), direct immersion SPME based on the resulting porous carbon was applied for analyzing eight polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Under the optimal conditions, the developed method exhibited a wide linear range for PAHs (30–30,000 μg kg−1) along with low limits of detection (LODs, 3.12–8.55 μg kg−1) and limits of quantification (LOQs, 10.4–28.5 μg kg−1). Moreover, the proposed method exhibited high reliability in its application on the determination of PAHs in soil samples, highlighting the application potential of COF derived porous carbons in monitoring aromatic pollutants in the environmental samples.