Bioinspired Polydopamine Sheathed Nanofibers for High-Efficient in Vivo Solid-Phase Microextraction of Pharmaceuticals in Fish Muscle

In this study, electrospun nanofibers were used as solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fiber coatings after substituting the water-soluble sheath of the emulsion electrospun polystyrene (PS)@Plurinic F-127 core–sheath nanofibers with biocompatible and water-stable polydopamine (PDA) and subsequently being appropriately cross-linked with glutaraldehyde (GA) to enhance the strength of the electrospun architecture. The novel custom-made PS@PDA-GA coating was wettable in aqueous solutions and thus exhibited much higher extraction efficiency than the nonsheathed PS nanofiber coating and the thicker polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) coating. The novel coating also possessed excellent stability (relative standard deviations (RSDs) less than 7.3% for six sampling-desorption cycles), interfiber reproducibility (RSDs less than 14.3%), and antibiofouling ability, which were beneficial for in vivo sampling. The PS@PDA-GA fiber was used to monitor pharmaceuticals in dorsal-epaxial muscle of living fish, and satisfactory sensitivities with the limits of detection in the range of 1.1 (mefenamic acid) to 8.9 (fluoxetine) ng·g–1 and comparable accuracies to liquid extraction were achieved. In general, this study explored a convenient and effective method to sheath nanofibers for high-efficient in vivo SPME of analytes of interest in semisolid tissues.