A novel method for the determination of three volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath by solid-phase microextraction-ion mobility spectrometry.

A method was carried out for the quantitative determination of the concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) using solid-phase microextraction and ion mobility spectrometry (SPME-IMS). This method was optimized and evaluated. The best results were obtained at sorption temperature 70 °C, desorption temperature 200 °C, and extraction time 15 min. Under the optimized conditions, the linear dynamic range was found to be 0.01-4.0 ppb (R(2) > 0.995), 2.3-400 ppm (R(2) > 0.994), and 2.5-76 ppb (R(2) > 0.998) for acetone, acetaldehyde, and acetonitrile, respectively. The detection limits for acetone, acetaldehyde, and acetonitrile were 0.001 ppb, 0.18 ppm, and 0.22 ppb, respectively. As a practical application, the method was applied for the determination of acetone, acetaldehyde, and acetonitrile in human breath matrix. Therefore, the proposed method was found to be effective and simple enough to be strongly recommended for real sample analysis.