Accordion-like TiCT MXene nanosheets as a high-performance solid phase microextraction adsorbent for determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons using GC-MS.

Two dimensional accordion-like TiCT MXene, where T represents surface termination groups such as -OH, -O-, and -F, is synthesized by selective etching of aluminum layers from TiAlC. This manuscript reports on the adsorption of organic molecules from head-space and aqueous environments containing TiCT, a representative of the MXene family. TiCT coated by gluing method on a stainless steel wire was successfully utilized as a highly sensitive and stable head-space solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fiber. A SPME method with the MXene as the adsorbent combined with gas chromatography with MS detector was used to determine the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in water samples. Low detection limits in the range of 0.2-5 ng L, wide linearity and good reproducibility (RSD = 4.6 to 7.4% for n = 6) under the optimized extraction conditions was achieved. Finally, the MXene coated fiber was successfully used for the determination of PAHs in real water samples. The relative recoveries for six PAHs are from 91.3-105.0%, which proved the applicability of the method. Also, melamine was selected as a polar analyte and it has been shown that TiCT MXene has good capability in extraction of melamine (the extraction recovery for melamine = 80.1%) from aqueous media by dispersive micro solid-phase extraction. Graphical abstractTwo dimensional accordion-like TiC MXene was synthesized by selective etching of aluminum layers from TiAlC. TiC MXene was employed as solid phase microextraction fiber coating for the extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from water samples.