Innovative approach to increase sensibility and selectivity in analytical chemistry: QuEChERS method

Abstract

The QuEChERS method, acronym of quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe is one of the pre-treatment techniques that has gained great popularity among researchers for analysis of different analytes such as drugs, pesticides, mycotoxin, etc. The QuEChERS method involved different steps: liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) with minimum use of organic solvent, followed by salting-out and clean-up step using dispersive-Solid Phase Extraction (d-SPE). In the last years, all these steps have been optimized in order to increase sensibility and selectivity. This method allows to reduce the sample manipulation, avoiding loss of target analytes and increasing the recovery. Furthermore, the method is considered to be more environmentally friendly, respecting the green analytical chemistry (GAC) principles. The QuEChERS method has already been applied for extraction of different compounds and it is expected that will be more used in the next years. In this review the main advantages and recent applications of this procedure have been reported.