Physical assistive technologies of solid-phase microextraction: Recent trends and future perspectives

At present, researches on various areas have been benefited from the advancement in solid-phase microextraction (SPME) technique, which covers a wide scope of analytes with different properties, facilitates on-site sampling and sample preparation, allows automated operation with high sample throughput, and facilitates long-range monitoring. As the scope of SPME grows, further increases in the specificity, speed and efficiency of this technique are still urgently needed. Application of auxiliary energies is one of the efficient strategies to achieve the aforementioned purpose. This review offers a brief discussion concerning several physical assistive technologies of SPME (e.g. vacuum, ultrasound, microwave, electrical driving force, magnetism, etc.) with respect to targeted or untargeted analysis of different substances in environmental, biological and food samples. Achievements, limitations, and future trends of these applications are also discussed. This review article is believed to be conductive to future applications of auxiliary energy assisted SPME methods in various fields.