Covalent triazine-based frameworks for efficient solid-phase microextraction of phthalic acid esters from food-contacted plastics

ABSTRACT Owing to various health threats associated with phthalic acid esters (PAEs), this category of endocrine-disrupting compounds has attracted more and more public scrutiny. However, the efficient preconcentration of PAEs from complex food-contacted plastics still remains challenging. Herein, three covalent triazine-based frameworks (CTFs) were constructed by facile Friedel-Crafts reactions of cyanuric chloride (CC), with triptycene (TPC), fluorene (FL) and 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene (TPB), respectively. Three CTFs were then employed as solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coatings for the extraction of PAEs. Benefiting from the large surface area and high pore volume, the newly-synthesized CC-TPC based SPME method exhibited large enrichment factors (978–2210), low limits of detection (0.027–0.10 ng g   −   1 ), satisfactory linear ranges (0.09–20 ng g   −   1 ), acceptable repeatabilities (4.3–9.6%) and high relative recoveries (92.0–104.6%).