Electrospun nanofibers as sorbent material for solid phase extraction

Abstract

Electrospinning has emerged as the most versatile technique for nanofiber fabrication. Owing to their large surface area to volume ratio, electrospun nanofibers have the potential to serve as a good sorbent material for solid phase extraction (SPE) based techniques. The ability to incorporate a variety of functionalities prior or post-electrospinning presents a platform to tune the sorbents for specific applications. It is the aim of this contribution to highlight some of the recent developments that harness the great potential of electrospun nanofibers as sorbents for SPE. The review discusses the various ways in which the electrospinning technique addresses two important parameters for sorbent material, which are sorptive capacity and selectivity. It concludes by presenting and discussing the potential for development of SPE format technology and configurations based on electrospun nanofibers.

Electrospun zein nanofibers incorporating cyclodextrins

“…Unique properties of electrospun nanofibers/nanowebs including a relatively large surface area to volume ratio and pore sizes within the nanoscale and multi-functionality due to the presence of functional additives and nanoparticles make them favorable candidates in a variety of application areas such as membranes/nanofilters, wound dressing, tissue engineering, drug delivery, nanotextiles, nanocomposites, energy, environment, etc. (Agarwal et al, 2009;Bhardwaj & Kundu, 2010;Chigome, Darko, & Torto, 2011;Lu, Wang, & Wei, 2009;Ramakrishna et al, 2006;Teo & Ramakrishna, 2009;Thavasi, Singh, & Ramakrishna, 2008;Xie, Li, & Xia, 2008;Yoon, Hsiao, & Chu, 2008).…”

Electrospun nanofiber sorbents for the pre-concentration of urinary 1-hydroxypyrene

“…Electrospun nanofibers have been widely received due to their great analytical potential when employed as SPE sorbents (Kang et al 2009;Kang et al 2007;Chigome et al 2011;Adeyemi et al 2011). Their high specific surface areas (Liu et al 2010;Aguado et al 2009;Zhang et al 2008) and ease of functionalization with various groups for specific purposes (Kang et al 2007;Kang et al 2008;Yoshitake et al 2003) has increased their acceptance in the scientific community.…”

“…Their high specific surface areas (Liu et al 2010;Aguado et al 2009;Zhang et al 2008) and ease of functionalization with various groups for specific purposes (Kang et al 2007;Kang et al 2008;Yoshitake et al 2003) has increased their acceptance in the scientific community. The simplest and most flexible means of fabricating nanofibers is via electrospinning (Chigome et al 2011;Uyar and Besenbacher 2008;Greiner and Wendorff 2007;Ramakrishna et al 2006). The technique allows for control of the nanofibers orientation thereby influencing the fiber arrangement that has a significant effect on the performance of the subsequent sorbent material (Ma et al 2005;Frenot and Chronakis 2003;Huang et al 2003).…”

“…It has since been overtaken by solid-phase extraction (SPE) due to its numerous demerits (Oluseyi et al 2011;Kang et al 2009;Kang et al 2007;Chigome et al 2011;Kataoka et al 2009). SPE has gained popularity and acceptability because of its selectivity, reproducibility (Wardencki et al 2007), ease of operation, and the wide range of available sorbent materials.…”

Electrospun polystyrene/Aliquat 336 for preconcentration and determination of thiocyanate in flow analysis

“…To avoid this problem, there has been an increasing interest in the use of fibres as column packing materials [16][17][18][19] because fibres with small diameters can offer a large specific surface area without creating a high back-pressure. A technique that can be used to prepare fibres in which a liquid extractant is immobilised between the polymer chains of the fibres is electrospinning.…”