Green electromembrane extraction of morphine by sodium alginate-g-polyacrylamide/agarose interpenetrating polymer network as a membrane

Abstract

The isolation and pre-concentration of drugs from complex biological matrices prior to analysis remains a significant challenge. This study introduces a novel method for the extraction and determination of morphine from biological fluids utilizing a sodium alginate-g-polyacrylamide/agarose hydrogel electromembrane (EME) coupled with square wave voltammetry (SWV) at a glassy carbon electrode. This innovative approach eliminates the need for organic solvents, promoting a greener analytical methodology. The EME process involves the application of a direct current potential across the hydrogel membrane, facilitating the transport of charged morphine molecules from a donor solution (pH 7.0) to an acceptor solution (pH 3.0) under optimized conditions. Following extraction (70 V, 25 min), the acceptor solution is subjected to SWV analysis in a phosphate buffer solution (pH 6.0). This approach successfully extracts morphine, a highly polar compound (log P = 0.43), without requiring ion-pairing or carrier reagents. The method exhibits impressive limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) of 0.036 μg/mL and 0.109 μg/mL, respectively. This work demonstrates the potential of the sodium alginate-g-polyacrylamide/agarose hydrogel EME coupled with SWV for the sensitive determination of morphine in urine and wastewater samples.