Electrospun nanofibers-based online micro-solid phase extraction for the determination of monohydroxy polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in human urine

In this article, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) modified nanofibers that represent a novel kind of packing materials for micro-solid phase extraction (μ-SPE) is reported for the first time. The composite material was fabricated through in-situ formation of AgNPs on the polydopamine (PDA) coated polystyrene electrospun fibers (PS@PDA-Ag). The nanofibers displayed desirable hydrophilicity, large surface area, high porosity, good extraction ability and certain capacity to resist matrix interference. A μ-SPE combined with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC–MS) method was developed for the online determination of three monohydroxy polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (OH-PAHs) metabolites in human urine. Under the optimal conditions, good linearity (0.02–5   ng   mL −1 ) was acquired with the correlation coefficients (R 2 ) being larger than 0.9962. Low limits of detection (0.007–0.032   ng   mL −1 ) expressed the satisfactory sensitivity of the method. Moreover, the intraday relative standard deviation values lower than 9.7% and the recoveries among the range of 71–116% were obtained. In general, the online μ-SPE-LC–MS method had the features of simplicity, rapidity, sensitivity and automation, and it was expected to become a promising approach for the online analysis of trace OH-PAHs in complex biological samples.