Investigation of the applicability of highly ordered TiO2 nanotube array for enrichment and determination of polychlorinated biphenyls at trace level in environmental water samples

Present study investigated the applicability of ordered TiO2 nanotube arrays for the enrichment and determination of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in water samples. A new and reliable method was developed for the preconcentration and determination of PCBs by micro-solid phase equilibrium extraction in combination with gas chromatography and electron capture detection (GC–ECD), which exploited the special physical and chemical properties of ordered TiO2 nanotube arrays. The experimental results indicated that low LODs were easily achieved in the range of 0.02–0.10 μg L−1 for PCB-28, PCB-52, PCB-101, PCB-153, PCB-138, and PCB-180. The proposed method was validated with several real water samples, and good spiked recoveries have been obtained in the range of 95.8–110.5%. The experimental results demonstrated that TiO2 nanotube arrays could be reused for over 200 times without the lost of the extraction efficiency. All these showed that TiO2 nanotube arrays would be very useful in the enrichment and determination of trace pollutants.