Simple preparation of reduced graphene oxide coatings for solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) of furfural to be detected by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

Graphene oxide is widely-used for many applications because of its surface area and the variety of oxygen functional groups that possess. This latter feature allows it to be a good candidate for polar compounds adsorption such as furfural. Furfural is a toxic compound that has been detected in a wide variety of foods of daily consumption. Frequent exposure in high doses can represent a risk to human health. In the present work, it is proposed an easy procedure to obtain reduced graphene oxide based coatings through dip-coating for Solid Phase Micro-Extraction (SPME) of furfural. The coatings were made with graphene oxide and carboxylated graphene oxide. These coatings were thermally reduced and then tested using a furfural standard. The thermally reduced graphene oxide coatings were characterized using FT-IR, Raman spectroscopy and SEM. SEM micrographs revealed that graphene oxide based fibers had thickness values between 1.5 and 2.5 μm approximately. Subsequently the results of furfural extraction were compared with those obtained from the Divinylbenzene/Carboxen/Polydimethylsiloxane (DVB/CAR/PDMS) commercial fibers.