“…In the last decades, a number of separation/preconcentration techniques have been utilised for the determination of trace amounts of toxic metal ions, including liquid-liquid extraction [10], precipitation [11] and solid-phase extraction (SPE) [12][13][14][15]. Among these techniques, SPE procedures are considered superior to other procedures due to their simplicity, flexibility, cost effectiveness, higher enrichment factors, ease of automation, low consumption of reagents and safety with respect to hazardous samples [16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”