Derivation of carbonaceous nanoparticles from glucose-modified nickel-titanium oxide nanoparticles grown on Nitinol fiber for solid phase microextraction of several polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in water samples

Abstract

A facile strategy was developed for the fabrication of new nanoparticles-templated carbonaceous coating on a Nitinol (NiTi) fiber substrate. The NiTi fiber was first electrochemically anodized for the growth of nickel-titanium oxide nanoparticles (NiTiONPs). Thereafter, NiTiONPs were used as supporting templates for the derivation of carbonaceous nanoparticles (CNPs) via the hydrothermal reaction of glucose followed by carbonization in nitrogen atmosphere. The adsorption performance of the NiTi@NiTiONPs and the NiTi@NiTiO@CNPs fibers was evaluated using typical aromatic compounds as model analytes coupled to high-performance liquid chromatography with UV detection. The results clearly indicated that the NiTiO@CNPs coating exhibited higher extraction capability for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) than UV filters. For this purpose, several parameters of SPME with the NiTi@NiTiO@CNPs fiber were examined for the enrichment of PAHs in water. Under the obtained conditions, the calibration curves were linear over the concentration ranges of 0.05–200 μg·L–1 with correlation coefficients above 0.999. Limits of detection were between 0.012 μg·L–1 and 0.15 μg·L–1. Relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the intra-day and the inter-day analyses with the single fiber varied from 3.03% to 5.34% and from 3.31% to 5.82%, respectively. Moreover, RSDs for the fiber-to-fiber reproducibility with five fibers fabricated in different batches were between 4.89% and 7.10%. Finally, the applicability of the proposed method was validated via determination of target PAHs in real water samples with the relative recoveries of 82.6%–114%. Notably, the superior extraction performance of the fabricated fiber was still maintained even after more than 250 extraction/desorption cycles due to strong adhesion of the CNPs coating to NiTiONPs.