Fabrication of porous cobalt oxide/carbon nanopolks on electrospun hollow carbon nanofibers for microextraction by packed sorbent of parabens from human blood

Abstract

In this work, electrospinning and hydrothermal methods were employed to synthesize an innovative 3D Co3O4/C@HCNFs nanocomposite as the sorbent. It was then used in a packed sorbent microextraction system for parabens analysis in human blood samples, followed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The coaxial electrospun core-shell nanofibers mat was stabilized and carbonized to produce the hollow carbon nanofibers (HCNFs) substrate. A coating of cobalt carbonate hydroxide nanopolks was then grown on the HCNFs through hydrothermal synthesis. Ultimately, some of the nanopolks were converted to ZIF-67 by pouring the mat into a warm solution of 2-methyl imidazole and heat-treated into porous Co3O4/C afterward. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analyses were used to characterize the produced nanocomposite. The effective parameters of the adsorption and desorption steps were optimized by a central composite design. The figures of merit were evaluated under optimal conditions. The linear range of parabens was obtained between 0.5–500.0 ng ml−1 with R2 ≥ 0.9980. The detection limits of the method were between 0.1 and 0.2 ng ml−1. The intra-day and inter-day precisions were less than 4.3%. Relative recoveries between 92.0% and 109.3% were achieved. The findings demonstrated the eligible performance of the method.