Polyamide Noncoated Device for Adsorption-Based Microextraction and Novel 3D Printed Thin-Film Microextraction Supports

Polyamide noncoated device for adsorption-based microextraction (PANDA microextraction) is a brand new, easy to prepare, environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and efficient sample preparation method created entirely with the use of 3D printing. The proposed method is based on the extractive proprieties of the unmodified polyamide and carbon fiber blends and is compared with the highly selective thin-film microextraction (TFME). In addition, 3D printing was used to simplify the process of TFME. Prototype sample preparation devices were evaluated by the extraction of oral fluid spiked with 38 small molecules with diverse chemical natures, such as lipophilicity in the log P range of 0.2-7.2. The samples were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. The results indicate that chemically and thermally resistant 3D printed supports can be successfully used as a cost-saving, environmentally friendly solution for the preparation of TFME devices, alternative to the conventional metal supports, with only marginal differences in the extraction yield (mean = 4.0%, median = 1.8%, range = 0.0-22.3%, n = 38). Even more remarkably, in some cases, the newly proposed PANDA microextraction method exceeded the reference TFME in terms of the extraction efficacy and offered excellent sample cleanup as favorable matrix effects were observed (mean = -8.5%, median = 7.5%, range = -34.7-20.0%, n = 20). This innovative approach paves the road to the simplified sample preparation with the use of emerging extractive 3D printing polymers.

Automated summary

Polyamide noncoated device for adsorption-based microextraction (PANDA microextraction) is a new, easy to prepare, environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and efficient sample preparation method created entirely with the use of 3D printing. The method utilizes the extractive properties of unmodified polyamide and carbon fiber blends and is compared to thin-film microextraction (TFME). The results show that 3D printed supports can be successfully used as a cost-saving, environmentally friendly solution for TFME devices, with similar extraction yield and sometimes even better extraction efficacy.