A Zn-based metal coordination cluster Zn5 used for solid phase microextraction of ten phenolic compounds from water and soil

Exploring coating materials with superior extraction efficiency has always been the pursuit in the field of solid phase microextraction (SPME). Metal coordination clusters with high thermal and chemical stability, abundant functional groups as active adsorption site are the promising coatings. In the study, a Zn5(H2Ln)6(NO3)4 (Zn5, H3Ln =(1,2-bis-(benzo[d]imidazol-2-yl)-ethenol) cluster coating was prepared and applied for SPME of ten phenols. Zn5 based SPME fiber exhibited high extraction efficiencies for phenols in headspace (HS) mode, which circumvented the pollution of SPME fiber. The adsorption isotherm and theoretical calculation indicated the adsorption mechanism of phenols on Zn5 was hydrophobic interaction, H-bond interaction and π-π stacking. Under the optimized extraction conditions, an HS-SPME-GC-MS/MS method was developed for the determination of ten phenols in water and soil samples. For ten phenolic compounds in water and soil samples, the linear ranges were 0.5–5000 ng/L and 0.5–250 ng/g, respectively. The limits of detection (LODs, S/N = 3) were 0.010–1.20 ng/L and 0.0048–0.16 ng/g, respectively. The precisions of single fiber and fiber-to-fiber were lower than 9.0% and 14.1%, respectively. The proposed method was applied for the detection of ten phenolic compounds in various water and soil samples, showing satisfactory recovery (72.1–118.8%). This study delivered a novel and efficient SPME coating material for the extraction of phenols.