Spherical mesoporous carbon as a dispersive solid phase extraction adsorbent for rapid detection of polychlorinated biphenyls in cigarette papers via GC–MS

In the present work, spherical mesoporous carbon (SMC) materials were synthesized through a one-pot synthesis strategy using sucrose and silica nanoparticles as the carbon framework source and mesopore-generating template. The SMC with a high surface area and uniform pore sizes was obtained by controlling the template size of silica nanoparticles. Subsequently, SMC as a solid-phase dispersion extraction adsorbent coupled with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was utilized for the reliable and rapid determination of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in cigarette papers. The analytical results indicate that SMC effectively reduced the interference from complex matrices in detecting PCBs. The method demonstrated good trueness (recoveries>90 %), precision (RSD≤10 %), with detection limits ranging from 0.62 to 2.97 ng/mL, and a suitable liner range from 10 to 500 ng/mL (R² > 0.995). This method successfully quantified seven target PCBs (PCB18, PCB28, PCB52, PCB101, PCB138, PCB153, and PCB180) in the real cigarette paper samples. The developed method is simple, rapid, and effective, demonstrating great potential for determining PCBs in cigarette paper.