In-syringe dispersive solid phase extraction: a novel format for electrospun fiber based microextraction

A novel in-syringe dispersive solid phase extraction (dSPE) system using electrospun silica fibers as adsorbents has been developed in the current work. A few milligrams of electrospun silica fibers were incubated in sample solution in the barrel of a syringe for microextraction assisted by vortex. Due to the benefit of dispersion and the high mass transfer rate of the sub-microscale electrospun silica fibers, the extraction equilibrium was achieved in a very short time (less than 1 min). Moreover, thanks to the long fibrous properties of electrospun fibers, the separation of the adsorbent from sample solution was easily achieved by pushing out the sample solution which therefore simplified the sample pretreatment procedure. Besides, the analytical throughput was largely increased by using a multi-syringe plate to perform the extraction experiment. The performance of the in-syringe dSPE device was evaluated by extraction of endogenous cytokinins from plant tissue samples based on the hydrophilic interaction. Six endogenous cytokinins in 20 mg of Oryza sativa L. (O. sativa) leaves were successfully determined under optimized conditions using in-syringe dSPE combined with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis. The results demonstrated that the in-syringe dSPE method was a rapid and high-throughput strategy for the extraction of target compounds, which has great potential in microscale sample pretreatment using electrospun fibers.