Functional materials-based sample pretreatment for disinfection by-products

The health risk caused by highly toxic disinfection by-products (DBPs) is a global concern, and monitoring their exposure levels is urgently needed. Solid phase extraction (SPE) has become an indispensable element for sensitive and accurate analysis through purification and enrichment. Meanwhile, DBPs possess diverse molecular characteristics owing to various functional groups and molecular sizes, and conventional extraction materials lack desirable selectivity and affinity to DBPs, which restricts the development of efficient analytical approaches. Recently, the development of functional materials with ideal selectivity, adsorption capacity, and regeneration ability has demonstrated great potential to address this situation. This review summarizes the latest studies on the functional materials-based SPE sample pretreatment of DBPs since 2012. We focus on the design and preparation of functional materials, as well as adsorption mechanisms. The future prospects and challenges of utilizing functional materials in the analysis of DBPs are proposed, aiming to promote the corresponding analytical methods.