Development of\na Paper-Based Disposal Thin-Film Solid-Phase\nMicroextraction Tool for the Quantification of Environmentally Hazardous\n4‑Chlorophenol in Water

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