Hollow carbon nanospheres with high surface areas for fast, broad-spectrum and sensitive adsorption of pollutants

Hollow carbon nanospheres (HCNs) with numerous nanopores in their ultrathin carbon shells have been prepared and applied as SPME fiber coatings. Benefiting from its ultrahigh surface area, short diffusion distance, and nitrogen doping, the HCNs-coated fiber demonstrates excellent properties of fast mass transfer, broad-spectrum adsorption and high extraction efficiencies. These encouraging results could offer a benchmark for developing advanced SPME in environment analyses requiring high-performance enrichment of abundant analytes, especially for unknown compounds.