Mass fabrication of 3D inter-porous graphene oxide-coated fibers for solid-phase microextraction of petroleum hydrocarbons

A novel strategy for fabricating deeply reduced three-dimensional inter-porous graphene oxide (drtdipGO)-coated solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibers was developed. The reduced graphene oxide (rGO) coating was initially immobilized onto a stainless steel wire (SSW) through natural contraction from water loss during the drying process. This was achieved via deoxygenation of graphite oxide using ascorbic acid in an aqueous medium. To enhance the hydrophobicity, surface area, and adhesion strength between the coating and SSW, the rGO coating was calcined and further deoxidized in an H 2 /Ar atmosphere at 1100 °C. The as-fabricated fiber exhibited a homogeneous and wrinkled surface, high Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area (520 m 2  g −1 ), increased hydrophobicity, and unique three-dimensional inter-porous structure. The drtdipGO-coated fibers were employed for sensitive headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) of petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs) in water samples. Enrichment factors ranging from 1.2 to 32.1 were achieved for PHCs. The extraction efficiency per unit volume of the drtdipGO coating for all 31 PHCs was higher than that of five commercial SPME fiber coatings (1.5–1275.0-fold improvement). The proposed method exhibited a linear range of 5–500 μg L −1  (R ≥ 0.990), with limits of detection and quantification ranging from 0.71 to 14.4 μg L −1 and 2.4–48.0 μg L −1 , respectively. Recoveries (C10–C26) of 83%–108 % were obtained for water samples sourced from river, sewage, lake, and artificial water samples.