Disposable ionic liquid-coated etched stainless steel fiber for headspace solid-phase microextraction of organophosphorus flame retardants from water samples

Abstract

A simple and sensitive method for determining organophosphorus flame retardants (PFRs) in water samples was first developed based on headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) using an ionic liquid-coated etched stainless steel (IL-ESS) fiber followed by a gas chromatography-flame photometric detector (GC-FPD). The etched stainless steel wire, whose rough and porous structure could not only allow IL to be held properly but also load more IL, was used as the support of the prepared fiber. The experimental results proved that the extraction capacity of the proposed fiber was higher than that of other conventional disposable IL-based coatings and the commercial SPME fibers. Parameters affecting the extraction efficiency were investigated. Under the optimal extraction conditions, the linear range of the proposed method was in the range of 10–5 × 10⁴ ng L⁻¹. The reproducibility of fiber-to-fiber (n = 6) was in the range of 3.9–8.2%. The method detection limits (signal/noise = 3) were in the range of 0.8–9.3 ng L⁻¹. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of PFRs in the real water samples with good recoveries (78.2–105.8%) and low relative standard deviations (less than 7.7%). The results demonstrate that the proposed method was very attractive for the analysis of PFRs in water.