abstract |
A sol-gel poly-THF coating was developed for high-performance capillary microextraction to facilitate ultra-trace analysis of polar and nonpolar organic compounds. Parts per quadrillion level detection limits were achieved using Poly-THF coated microextraction capillaries in conjunction with GC-FID. Sol-gel Poly-THF coatings showed extraordinarily high sorption efficiency for both polar and nonpolar compounds, and proved to be highly effective in providing simultaneous extraction of nonpolar, moderately polar, and highly polar analytes from aqueous media. Sol-gel poly-THF coated microextraction capillaries showed excellent thermal and solvent stability, making them very suitable for hyphenation with both gas-phase and liquid-phase separation techniques, including GC, HPLC, and CEC. In CME-HPLC and CME-CEC hyphenations, sol-gel poly-THF coated microextraction capillaries have the potential to provide new levels of detection sensitivity in liquid-phase trace analysis, and to extend the analytical scope of CME to thermally labile-, high molecular weight-, and other types of compounds that are not amenable to GC. |