Organic solvent supported silica aerogel thin film microextraction: An efficient sample preparation method for ion mobility spectrometry.

• Silica aerogel thin film microextraction was coated by organic solvent and presented as a sample preparation method. • The proposed method was applied for the extraction of molinate before analyzing by CD-IMS. • The method showed an amazing increase in the extraction efficiency relative to TFME alone. A hyphenated method consisting of liquid-phase microextraction and solid-phase microextraction was presented as a sample preparation method. To that end, silica aerogel thin film microextraction prepared by electrospinning procedure was coated by organic solvent (tetrachloromethane) and used for extraction of molinate herbicide as a test compound. Corona discharge ionization-ion mobility spectrometry was applied as the detection system. Some parameters affected the extraction efficiency were evaluated and optimized with the response surface method. Under optimum conditions, the linear dynamic range was obtained 0.20–7.0 µg L−1, and the method detection limit and limit of quantification were obtained 0.075 and 0.20 µg L−1, respectively. The relative standard deviations of intra- and inter-day were calculated 4% and 7%, respectively, and the enrichment factor for the spiked sample (2 µg L−1) was obtained 600. Different real samples, including tomato, apple, carrot, agricultural wastewater, well water, river water, and drinking water samples were used for investigating the capability of the proposed method. The relative recovery values for these samples were obtained in the range of 90–108%. The satisfactory results disclosed that the organic solvent- thin-film microextraction could be utilized as an efficient sample preparation method for analyzing molinate in complex matrices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]