Automation of static and dynamic non-dispersive liquid phase microextraction. Part 1: Approaches based on extractant drop-, plug-, film- and microflow-formation

Simplicity, effectiveness, swiftness, and environmental friendliness – these are the typical requirements for the state of the art development of green analytical techniques. Liquid phase microextraction (LPME) stands for a family of elegant sample pretreatment and analyte preconcentration techniques preserving these principles in numerous applications. By using only fractions of solvent and sample compared to classical liquid–liquid extraction, the extraction kinetics, the preconcentration factor, and the cost efficiency can be increased. Moreover, significant improvements can be made by automation, which is still a hot topic in analytical chemistry. This review surveys comprehensively and in two parts the developments of automation of non-dispersive LPME methodologies performed in static and dynamic modes. Their advantages and limitations and the reported analytical performances are discussed and put into perspective with the corresponding manual procedures. The automation strategies, techniques, and their operation advantages as well as their potentials are further described and discussed.