Polystyrene-based nanospheres with controllable microstructures for exceptional solid phase microextraction of organic pollutants

Systematic investigation on the adsorption performance of polystyrene-based nanospheres towards persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is of great importance to the design of high-capacity adsorbent and the toxicological risk assessment of nano plastic. In this study, a series of polystyrene-based nanospheres with controllable mi-crostructures, have been constructed successfully as model adsorbents, by the strategies of emulsion polymeri-zation, hyper-crosslinking and direct carbonization. In the form of Solid phase microextraction (SPME) coatings, the impacts of microstructures on the adsorption performance of constructed nanospheres have been highlighted, by employing benzene series, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as target adsorbates. Moreover, it is surprisingly found that the grafted F atoms make PS demonstrate better enrichment effects towards PCBs than the Cl atoms, mainly due to stronger sigma (sigma)-hole interactions between F atoms and PCBs. In consideration of the most outstanding performance, the F-functionalized nanospheres (xFFNs)-coated SPME fiber is employed for the enrichment of PCBs from water samples, and the enrichment factors range from 1500 to 10030. After coupling the xFFNs-coated fiber with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), highly sensitive analytical method is developed with detection limits of 0.08-0.89 ng L-1, realizing precise quantifications of trace PCBs in treated sewage samples.

Automated summary

Systematic investigation on the adsorption performance of polystyrene-based nanospheres towards persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is crucial for high-capacity adsorbent design and toxicological risk assessment. In this study, a series of polystyrene-based nanospheres with controllable microstructures were successfully constructed as model adsorbents. It was found that F-functionalized nanospheres (xFFNs) demonstrated better enrichment effects towards PCBs due to stronger sigma (σ)-hole interactions. The xFFNs-coated SPME fiber showed excellent enrichment performance for PCBs, with detection limits of 0.08-0.89 ng L-1 for trace PCB quantification in treated sewage samples.