Sol-gel based metal-organic framework zeolite imidazolate framework-8 fibers for solid-phase microextraction of nitro polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in water samples.

In this study, three kinds of Zeolite imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8), synthesized by solvothermal, stirring and ball-milling method, were fabricated on the stainless steel wire via sol-gel technique. These fibers were used as solid phase microextraction (SPME) coating materials and applied for analyzing 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and 11 nitro polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAHs) in environmental water samples by gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The optimal pH, ionic strength, extraction time, extraction temperature, desorption temperature and desorption time were 6.0, without salt addition, 45 min, 35 °C, 260 °C and 5 min, respectively. The extraction mechanism of the ZIF-8 fiber might be the hydrophobicity, molecular penetration and π-π stacking interactions. Under the optimized conditions, the as-proposed fiber provides a wide linearity range from 10 to 20,000 ng L-1 and a low detection limit of 0.3-27.0 ng L-1 for PAHs and NPAHs analysis. The single fiber and fiber to fiber relative standard deviations were observed in the range of 3.0%-13.9% and 3.5%-12.3%, respectively. The method shows great potential in environmental analysis field.