Development of an improved liquid phase microextraction technique and its application in the analysis of flumetsulam and its two analogous herbicides in soil

An improved liquid phase microextraction (LPME) technique has been developed. As part of this technique, analytes were extracted into an extractant microdrop which was laid on the cone-shaped bottom of a PCR tube (polychloroprene rubber tube) but not at the needle tip of a microsyringe, and the sample vial and PCR tube were horizontally placed so that the extractant was not affected by the force of vertical orientation (gravity and floating force). The stability of the extractant microdrop increased greatly, and the selection of extractant was extended. In this work, flumetsulam and its two analogous herbicides were chosen as model analytes in investigating the feasibility of the new pretreatment method by coupling it to high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Under the optimized experimental conditions, the linear range and the limits of detection (S/N = 3) were 0.01-5 microg/mL (r = 0.9997) and 0.8 ng/mL for flumetsulam, 0.002-5 microg/mL (r = 0.9994) and 0.5 ng/mL for analogue 1, and 0.002-1 microg/mL (r = 0.9993) and 0.5 ng/mL for analog 2, respectively. The inter- and intraday reproducibilities (RSD) were below 5.3 and 4.5%, respectively. Good recoveries that ranged from 79.4 to 115.0% were obtained in the analysis of real soil samples. The extraction efficiency of the improved method was 4-8 times higher than that of the conventional liquid phase microextraction method. The novel, simple, rapid, sensitive technique is very suitable for extraction of apolar and medium polar analyte in complex environmental samples.