In-tube solid-phase microextraction based on NH₂-MIL-53(Al)-polymer monolithic column for online coupling with high-performance liquid chromatography for directly sensitive analysis of estrogens in human urine

In this work, a novel NH₂-MIL-53(Al) incorporated poly(styrene-divinylbenzene-methacrylic acid) (poly(St-DVB-MAA)) monolith was prepared via chemical fabrication. Moreover, it has been efficiently applied to the in-tube solid-phase microextraction (SPME) for online coupling with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to the direct determination of five estrogens in human urine samples. The NH₂-MIL-53(Al)-polymer monolith was suitable for in-tube SPME owing to its good permeability, high extraction efficiency, chemical stability, good reproducibility and long lifetime. The extraction conditions including extraction solvent, pH of sample solution, flow rate of extraction and desorption, and desorption volume were investigated. Under the optimum conditions, the enrichment factors were 180-304 and saturated amounts of extraction were 2326-21393 pmol for estriol, 17β-estradiol, estrone, ethinyl estradiol and progesterone, respectively. The adsorption mechanism was also explored which contributed to its strong extraction to target compounds. The proposed method had low limit of detection (2.0-40ng/L) and good linearity (with R² between 0.9908 and 0.9978). Four endogenous estrogens were detected in urine samples and the recoveries of all five analytes were ranged from 75.1-120% with relative standard deviations (RSDs) less than 8.7%. The results showed that the proposed online SPME-HPLC method based on NH₂-MIL-53(Al)-polymer monolithic column was highly sensitive for directly monitoring trace amount of estrogens in human urine sample.