A novel extraction technique based on carbon nanotubes reinforced hollow fiber solid/liquid microextraction for the measurement of piroxicam and diclofenac combined with high performance liquid chromatography.

A novel design of carbon nanotubes reinforced hollow fiber solid/liquid phase microextraction (CNTs-HF-SLPME) was developed to determine piroxicam and diclofenac in different real water samples. Functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were held in the pores of hollow fiber with sol-gel technology. The pores and lumen of carbon nanotubes reinforced hollow fiber were subsequently filled with a μL volume of organic solvent (1-octanol), and then the whole assembly was used for the extraction of the target analytes in direct immersion sampling mode. The target analytes were extracted from the sample by two extractants, one of which is organic solvent placed inside the pores and lumen of hollow fiber and the other one is CNTs held in the pores of hollow fiber. After extraction, the analytes were desorbed in acetonitrile and analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography. This novel extraction mode showed more excellent extraction performance in comparison with conventional hollow fiber liquid microextraction (without adding CNTs) and carbon nanotubes reinforced hollow fiber solid microextraction (CNTs held in the pores of hollow fiber, but no organic solvents placed inside the lumen of hollow fiber) under the respective optimum conditions. This method provided 47- and 184-fold enrichment factors for piroxicam and diclofenac, respectively, good inter-fiber repeatability and batch-to-batch reproducibility. Linearity was observed in the range of 20-960 μg L(-1) for piroxicam, and 10-2560 μg L(-1) for diclofenac, with correlation coefficients of 0.9985 and 0.9989, respectively. The limits of detection were 4.58 μg L(-1) for piroxicam and 0.40 μg L(-1) for diclofenac.