Ionic liquid‐based headspace in‐tube liquid‐phase microextraction coupled with CE for sensitive detection of phenols

: An ionic liquid-based headspace in-tube liquid-phase microextraction (IL-HS-ITLPME) in-line coupled with capillary electrophoresis (CE) is proposed. The method is capable of quantifying trace amounts of phenols in environmental water samples. In the newly developed method, simply by placing a capillary injected with IL in the HS above the aqueous sample, volatile phenols were extracted into the IL acceptor phase in the capillary. After extraction, electrophoresis of the phenols in the capillary was carried out. Extraction parameters such as the extraction time, extraction temperature, ionic strength, volume of the sample solution and IL types were systematically investigated. Under the optimized conditions, enrichment factors for four phenols were from 1510 to 1985. The proposed method provided a good linearity, low limits of detection (below 5.0 ng mL-1 ), and good repeatability of the extractions (RSDs below 6.7%, n = 6). This method was then utilized to analyze two real environmental samples of Xiaoxi Lake and tap water, obtaining acceptable recoveries and precisions. Compared with the usual HS-ITLPME for CE, IL-HS-ITLPME-CE is a simple, low-cost, fast and environmentally friendly pre-concentration technique. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.