Universal sample preparation for food commodities by hyphenating modern flow concepts

Sample preparation is the most time consuming and error introducing step of the analytical process. Therefore, this field witnesses a rampant growth in research and innovation including the development of tailored materials e.g., sorbents, and new methodologies, despite the trends in non-targeted analyses that aim fostering standardization of the sample preparation strategies. Solid phase extraction (SPE) and liquid-phase extraction (LPE) are the most often applied techniques to achieve higher sensitivity by analyte preconcentration, improvement of method robustness and reliability by matrix clean-up, and tune analyte selectivity from broad to exquisite. There is further a strong demand for procedural automation to overcome drawbacks of manual work including reduction of manual labour, consumables, and time. Development of clever operation schemes and fine-tuning of related fluidic parameters without resorting to hardware rearrangements of exotic new materials is among the related challenges of such automation. Flexible and versatile fluidic tools for automation SPE and LPE procedures, namely Bead-Injection (BI) and Lab-In-Syringe (LIS), bear an intrinsic higher reproducibility compared to manual operation but are regretfully limited to the academic domain because of a lack of standardization and complexity for those not initiated in the art. The aim of this project is to develop a hibrid LIS-BI platform able