Polyacrylamide gel in electromembrane extraction
Electromembrane extraction (EME) is a liquid phase microextraction technique based on the voltage-assisted migration of the target analytes between two aqueous solutions (the sample and the acceptor phase) separated by a polymeric membrane where an organic solvent is immobilized in the form of a supported liquid membrane (SLM). The technique, which has been the subject of several posts in this blog, allows the rapid extraction of ionic species. The present post highlights a recent article, published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, where polyacrylamide gels are proposed as a membrane in EME. Although polypropylene membranes are usually selected as a physical barrier between the two aqueous phases involved in EME, several research groups have proposed alternatives to this classical approach. In 2017, Tabani et al. proposed agarose gel as a greener alternative. Although good results were obtained, the large pore sizes of these gels (up to 300 nm)