Development of a Paper-Based Disposal Thin-Film Solid-Phase Microextraction Tool for the Quantification of Environmentally Hazardous 4-Chlorophenol in Water

The presence of chlorinated compounds in water resources presents various environmental and health risks. Therefore, there is a precise need to develop a potential technique for fast and efficient monitoring of chlorinated contaminants in water due to environmental protection and regulation compliance. Here, we designed a paper-based thin-film solid-phase microextraction (TF-SPME) patch to estimate 4-chlorophenol (4-CRP), a widely known environmentally hazardous pollutant in water samples. We fabricated the microextraction patch on the paper support utilizing the thin film applicator for uniform coating using divinylbenzene, polydimethylsiloxane, and a multiwalled carbon nanotube (MW-CNT) composite recipe. To check the performance of our fabricated tool, we directly exposed the TF-SPME patches to standard solutions with various concentrations of 4-CRP in water and finally quantified the analyte by exploiting the gas chromatography-mass spectrometer. Our experiments demonstrated the high extraction efficiency of the paper-based TF-SPME analytical tool for the estimation of 4-CRP in water with a limit of detection of ∼10 ng/mL, suggesting the practical applicability of the technique to monitor the analyte within the recommended range. To check the feasibility of the proposed technique for rapid determination, we performed the calibration curve of the analyte in the concentration range of 100-10,000 ng/mL and finally derived the curve fitting equation for the estimation of an unknown amount of 4-CRP. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using a simple paper-based thin-film solid-phase microextraction patch as a sampling kit for monitoring the environmentally hazardous 4-CRP pollutant from water. In the future, the proposed analytical method may be useful for the rapid quantification of chlorinated compounds from the water matrix.