Rapid Analysis of Volatile Components from Teucrium polium L. by Nanoporous Silica- polyaniline Solid Phase Microextraction Fibre Mohammad Bagher Gholivand, a * Marzieh Piryaei, a Mir Mahdi Abolghasemi b and Seyed Mohammad Maassoumi c ABSTRACT: Introduction – The development of simple, rapid and solvent-free methods for the analysis of essential oils is highly desirable. Microwave-assisted headspace solid-phase microextraction (MA-HS-SPME) is a new sampling and concentration technique for the extraction of volatile components in medicinal plants. The main advantages of this method are the reduction of extraction time and of organic solvent. Objective – A highly porous Santa Barbara amorphous (SBA-15)/polyaniline material was prepared in order to produce a SPME fibre. The proposed fibre was evaluated for the extraction of the volatile component of Teucrium polium L. Methodology – A homemade MA-HS-SPME apparatus was used for the extraction of volatile components. Highly porous SBA-15/ polyaniline materials were prepared for SPME. The prepared nanomaterial was immobilized onto a stainless steel wire for fabrication of the SPME fibre. Results – The SBA-15/polyaniline nanonporous fibre could adsorb volatile components of T. polium efficiently. In comparison with a HD method, the proposed technique could equally monitor almost all the components of the sample, but in an easier way that was rapid and required a much lower amount of sample. Conclusion – The experimental results showed that the nanoporous fibre was suitable for the semi-quantitative study of the composition of essential oils in plant materials and monitoring the variations in the volatile components of the plants. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords: microwave-assisted hydrodistillation; solid phase microextraction; SBA-15/polyaniline; essential oil Introduction The medicinal use of plants dates back to ancient times. Teucrium polium is a plant that has been used for over 2000 yr in traditional medicine (Said et al., 2002; Ljubuncic et al., 2006). The genus of Teucrium (Lamiaceae) is represented by 12 species in the flora of Iran (Mozaffarian, 1997). Teucrium polium L. is one of the wild-growing flowering species from this genus and is found abundantly in Iran. Teucrium polium locally named (‘Kalpoore’) has been known as an important traditional medicinal plant in the western part of Iran. The tea of T. polium is used as an appetiser, especially in children, and as a spice. Teucrium polium is known in some parts of Iran as an anti-diabetic herb (Esmaeili and Yazdanparast, 2004; Ashnagar et al., 2007; Moghtader, 2009). An infusion of the leaves and flowers of the plant is consumed as a refreshing beverage (Facciola, 1990). The biological activities of T. polium are widely reported and it has been shown to possess anti-inflammatory, anti-nociceptive, anti-bacterial, anti- hypertensive, hypolipidemic, anti-rheumatoid and hypoglycaemic effects (Tariq et al., 1989; Cakir and Duru, 1998; Kovacevic et al ., 2001; Rasekh et al., 2001; Abdollahi et al., 2003; Cozzani et al., 2005; Stanciu et al., 2006; Afifi et al ., 2009; Menichini et al., 2009; De Martino et al., 2010; Mitic et al., 2012). Various methods can be used for the isolation and extraction of essential oils from plant materials, which mainly include solvent extraction (Zancan et al., 2002; Kabouche et al., 2007), supercritical fluid extraction (Bartley and Foley, 1994; Bartley, 1995; Eikani et al., 1999) and liquid-phase microwave-assisted process extraction (Alfaro et al., 2003). However, these methods always lead to the loss of some volatile compounds, have low extraction efficiency and toxic solvent residues, and are time-consuming. Therefore, the development of simple, rapid and solvent-free methods for the analysis of essential oils is highly desirable. Headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) is a relatively new sampling and concentration technique for the extraction of plant essential oils (Cao et al., 2006; Kwon et al., 2006; Lopez et al., 2006; Theodoridis 2006; Zahradnickova and Bouman, 2006; Hashemi et al., 2009b). The HS-SPME technique followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) has proven to be a simple, sensitive and solvent-free method for the analysis of es- sential oil components. However, conventional HS-SPME still requires about 30 min for the extraction of essential oil * Correspondence to: M.B. Gholivand, Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran. Email: mb.gholivand@ yahoo.com a Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran b Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Maragheh University, Maragheh, Iran c Department of Plant Protection, Agricultural College, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran Phytochem. Anal. 2012 Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Research Article Received: 28 February 2012, Revised: 4 June 2012, Accepted: 4 June 2012 Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI 10.1002/pca.2382