Preparation and Application of a Novel Nanocomposites Membrane for Extracting the Primary Metabolite of Cannabis in Urine

The updated Nanostructure materials and nano technological tools are predicted to enable the synthesis of novel polymers, as well as polymer–inorganic composites to manufacture higher qualified membranes possess attractive physical and chemical properties with high performed sensitivity and selectivity. An accurate and simple method for drug analysis is required for forensic toxicological investigation. In this study new carboxylated poly (vinyl chloride) (CPVC) nanocomposites membranes were prepared and characterized. In the comparison between the peak areas resulted from application of pure CPVC, CPVC /silver nanocomposites and CPVC /palladium nanocomposites membranes for extraction of primary metabolite of cannabis in urine; 11-norΔ-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid (THC-COOH) indicated that incorporating palladium nano particles in the CPVC membrane improved the extraction capacity of the membrane to a high extent. The method was optimized to study the effect of different extraction and desorption conditions such as pH, ionic strength and membrane thickness, on enhancing sensitivity of the method. The extracted analytes were tested by gas chromatograph–mass spectrometer (GC–MS) in a selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode. Projected lower limit of detection (LOD) and lower limit of quantitation (LOQ) were 0.01 and 0.03μg/ml respectively, with relative standard deviations lower than 20%. The linearity range of the procedure was between the LOQ and 15 μg/ml, with correlation coefficient of 0.9818. The method satisfactory absolute recovery of 104.46 %. Finally, the proposed procedure was effectively tested to determine (THC-COOH) via 20 urine samples collected by the Forensic Toxicology lab.