Electrospun superhydrophobic polystyrene hollow fiber as a probe for liquid–liquid microextraction with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

A superhydrophobic polystyrene hollow fiber was electrospun around a copper spring collector. This approach led to the construction of a hollow fiber membrane, and the copper spring acted as a scaffold. The characteristic properties of the hollow fiber were studied by scanning electron microscopy. The membrane was used as a probe to transfer the extracting solvent from aquatic media to a gas chromatograph. After performing the liquid–liquid microextraction procedure on 10 mL of water sample by octanol, the whole solution was passed through the prepared polystyrene hollow fiber. Propanol, containing 2 mg/L lindane as the internal standard, was used for desorption and an aliquot of 2 μL of the desorbing solvent was subsequently injected into gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. Effects of different parameters influencing the extraction efficiency were optimized. The limits of detection and quantification were 2 and 6 ng/L, respectively. The relative standard deviations at a concentration level of 100 ng/L were between 2 and 6% (n = 3) while the method linearity ranged from 6 to 200 ng/L. Some real water samples were analyzed by the developed method and relative recoveries were in the range of 76–107%.