Fabrication of porous ionic liquid polymer as solid-phase microextraction coating for analysis of organic acids by gas chromatography - mass spectrometry

A kind of porous ionic liquid polymer was designed as coating material for solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibers to extract polar organic acids. The synthesized ionic liquids (1-vinyl-3-(4-vinyl-benzyl)imidazolium chloride) were polymerized in the presence of azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN), and subsequently coated on stainless steel wires with physical adhesion. To guarantee the adhesion between coating and the surface of stainless steel wires, micro-wave induced plasma was applied to modify the stainless steel wires. The derivatives of extracted organic acids were analyzed by gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) with N-tert-Butyldimethylsilyl-N-methyltrifluoroacetamide (MTBSTFA) as the derivatization reagent. Under the optimal condition, a calibration study was carried out to evaluate the performance of the SPME fibers. The calibration curves were linear (R-2 > 0.99) in the range from 0.01 mu g/ml to 1 mu g/ml for six organic acids. Detection limits were detected down to 0.07 ng/ml. To further validate the extraction efficiency of the fibers, experiments were conducted in comparison with commercial fibers. Lower LOD and LOQ values were obtained by the in-house fabricated fibers especially for polyatomic acids. Good repeatability (RSD <= 16%) and fiber-to-fiber reproducibility (RSD <= 20%) were obtained. The acceptable recovery of the spiked grape wine samples ranged from 78.19% to 98.11%. Additionally, long lifetime and good durability of the fibers have been demonstrated. The performance of the established SPME-GC-MS method for analysis of organic acids was shown to be greatly improved in comparison to the direct HPLC/CE method or other SPME materials as reported in the literature. In summary, a feasible and effective approach has been demonstrated to fabricate the in-house fabricated fibers based on porous ionic liquid polymers, which were proved to be advantageous and sensitive for extraction of polar organic acids. Simultaneously, application of the SPME derivatization GC-MS method for analysis of organic acids has been successfully verified as feasible and reliable.