An effective microfluidic based liquid-phase microextraction device (μLPME) for extraction of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs from biological and environmental samples

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. In this work, the traditional liquid phase microextraction (LPME) has been miniaturized into a microfluidic device (μLPME) where liquid phase microextraction is combined with an HPLC procedure. This integration enables extraction and determination of acid drugs by μLPME and HPLC, respectively. The analytes selected for the test are five widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs): salicylic acid (SAC), ketoprofen (KTP), naproxen (NAX), diclofenac (DIC) and ibuprofen (IBU). They have successfully been detected in biological (urine and saliva) and environmental (lake and river water) samples with excellent clean up, high extraction efficiency and good enrichment factor under stopped-flow conditions. The μLPME consists of two small channels (acceptor and donor channel) separated by a support liquid membrane and has been implemented to allow a simple membrane replacement an arbitrary number of times. The sample (pH 12) and acceptor phase (pH 1.5) are delivered to the μLPME at 1 μL min−1 flow rate and the extraction is completed after 6 min. Under these conditions, the recoveries obtained in urine samples are over 87% for all compounds. For environmental water analysis, different types of water samples have been analyzed obtaining recoveries over 75% for all compounds. The sample consumption is dramatically decreased (<7 μL) as compared to traditional LPME. This confirms the advantages of the here proposed μLPME when using small volume/high cost samples. Finally, when the acceptor flow is turned off during the extraction time, high enrichment factor significantly increases with the extraction time for all compounds. As an example, the IBU is enriched by a factor of 75 after 25 min extraction consuming only 500 μL of sample.