Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are commonly collected from gaseous samples by adsorption to materials such as the porous polymer Tenax TA. Adsorbed compounds are subsequently released from these materials by thermal desorption (TD) and separated then by gas chromatography (GC) with flame ionization (FID) or mass spectrometry (MS) detection. Tenax TA is known to be particularly suitable for non-polar to semipolar volatiles, however, many volatiles from environmental and biological samples possess a rather polar character.
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