Hollow fiber-protected metal–organic framework materials as micro-solid-phase extraction adsorbents for the determination of polychlorinated biphenyls in water samples by gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

A novel modified micro-solid-phase extraction (μ-SPE) device was developed in this study using hollow fiber-protected metal–organic framework (MOF) materials as sorbents. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were used as model compounds. Gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) was used for sample quantification and detection. Important factors that affect the extraction were investigated and optimized in detail. The developed μ-SPE-GC-MS/MS method had low limits of detection (0.15 ng L−1 to 0.63 ng L−1, S/N = 3), relatively high precision (relative standard deviation <13.5%), and good linearity in the range of 5–1000 ng L−1 for seven PCBs under optimized conditions. The μ-SPE device was more robust than the traditional “envelope” type device and could be used for more than 80 replicate extractions without performance loss. The proposed method was successfully used for analyzing environmental water samples. The results obtained in this paper demonstrate that the hollow fiber protection of MOF materials is an effective type of μ-SPE for aromatic pollutant extraction in water samples.