Efficient and sensitive quantification of polar tobacco volatile organic compounds by a micro thermal-assisted sampling device using reduced graphene oxide coupling with thermal desorption-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

Abstract It still remains a great challenge to selectively enrich and sensitively quantify the trace volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in real samples with complex matrix. In this study, an integration method combining a selective enrichment medium of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) with a specially designed micro thermal-assisted purge-and-trap sampling device was developed for efficient enrichment and sensitive quantification of trace tobacco VOCs coupling with thermal desorption (TD)-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The prepared rGO has been proved to possess excellent enrichment selectivity and capacity for tobacco polar VOCs with the multi-layer structure, good thermal stability and large specific surface area. The specially designed sampling device was efficient and suitable for enriching and sampling trace polar tobacco VOCs coupling with rGO medium. Under the optimized sampling and analytical conditions, the established analytical method could be actually applied for quantification of typical tobacco polar VOCs with the good recoveries of 72.9–128% and the satisfied RSDs of 1.8–19.9% ( n = 3). The results suggested that the developed method was selective, sensitive and reliable for enrichment and quantification of trace tobacco polar VOCs.