Nanomaterials for sample preparation

Due to their unique and often fascinating properties, nanomaterials have attracted much attention in various fields of materials science, electronics, biology, and even medicine. Research on application of nanomaterials in analytical chemistry has also experienced impressive growth in terms of number of papers published in the scientific literature. Sample preparation is often considered to be a fundamental step in analytical procedures, because it helps not only to achieve detection limits that are as low as legislation requires but also to clean up the sample matrix. The most popular sample preparation techniques are solid-phase extraction, solid-phase microextraction that use either fibers or in-tube devices, μ-solid-phase extraction and gas-phase preconcentration. The most novel nanomaterials that significantly contributed toward these techniques are carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The combination of their structures, dimensions, and topologies has provided attractive physical and chemical properties that are unparalleled by most known nanomaterials. This paper provides an overview of the new developments in nanomaterials that improve the sample preparation techniques.