Determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by solid-phase microextraction coupled to HPLC using a fiber with mesoporous silica coating

A novel SPME-HPLC method was developed for the determination of trace amounts of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). It was found that the SPME device with C₈H₁₇-SBA-15 (C ₈-SBA-15) mesoporous silica coating had high extraction efficiency, sufficient chemical and hydrothermal stability and good reversibility. The determination conditions for environmental pollutants like PAHs including extraction and desorption time, extraction temperature, ionic strength and stirring rate were optimized. Under optimized experimental conditions, results with good accuracy (with a recovery of 97.5–101.7%), precision (with a standard deviation of 0.15–1.07%) and low detection limit (LOD, 0.05–0.25 μg/L) were obtained, suggesting the SPME devices using chemical modified SBA-15 as coating material are promising in preconcentration, separation and determination of interested analytes in the future.