Graphene oxide-based microspheres for the dispersive solid-phase extraction of non-steroidal estrogens from water samples.

A modified Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe (QuEChERS) method based on the dispersive solid-phase extraction (dSPE) combined with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was developed for the determination of non-steroidal estrogens in water samples. In this study, graphene oxide-based silica microspheres (SiO2@GO) were used as dSPE material for the preconcentration of analytes. HPLC was used for the separation and detection. This was the first time that the synthesized SiO2@GO microspheres were used as stationary phases for the off-line preconcentration of the non-steroidal estrogens in dSPE. dSPE parameters, such as sample pH, volume and type of eluent were optimized. Application of the developed method to analyze spiked lake, reservoir and tap water samples resulted in good recoveries values ranging from 70 to 106% with relative standard deviation values lower than 7.0% in all cases. Limits of detection were in the range of 0.2-6.1 μg/L. The combined data obtained in this study recommended that the proposed method is very fast, simple, repeatable and accurate for the detection of non-steroidal estrogens. Furthermore, the SiO2@GO microspheres application could potentially be expanded to extract and pre-concentrate other compounds in various matrices.