SLE is essentially a scaled-down liquid-liquid extraction without the solvent waste and time-consuming, variation-introducing shaking steps. In SLE cleanup, samples are diluted in an aqueous solution and loaded onto a cartridge or 96-well plate containing a diatomaceous support material. Simply load the sample, wait five minutes for the water to fully disperse through the high surface area of the support, and then elute your target compounds with a nonpolar solvent. The matrix materials remain in the polar aqueous phase absorbed in the support material while the analytes of interest partition cleanly into the nonpolar extraction solvent. It’s ideal for neutral (nonionizable) compounds and can also be used for acids and bases following a simple pH adjustment for charge suppression.
