Mesoporous covalent organic polymer nanospheres for the preconcentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their derivatives

Abstract

A mesoporous covalent organic polymer (COP) was synthesized through a facile Friedel-Crafts condensation between p-quaterphenyl and trimesoyl chloride, which was designated as COP-QP-TC. Featured with hollow nanospheres architecture, permanent mesoporosity (2.54 nm), large surface area (536 m2 g−1), as well as high thermal and chemical stability, the newly-synthesized COP-QP-TC was utilized as a solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coating for the effective preconcentration of some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their nitrated and oxygenated derivatives. Combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometric (GC–MS) detection, the COP-QP-TC based SPME method exhibited high enrichment factors (248–799), low limits of detection (1.31–3.00 ng L−1), good linear range (4.37- 500 ng L−1) and acceptable precisions (relative standard deviations <10.3%). The COP-QP-TC was successfully applied for the SPME of some PAHs and their derivatives from environmental water samples with good method recoveries ranging from 85.8% to 114.4%.