TITLE:
HPTLC-MS as a Neoteric Hyphenated Technique for Separation and Forensic Identification of Drugs
AUTHORS:
Kanak Lata Verma, Manoj Kumar, Amar Pal Singh
KEYWORDS:
Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances, HPTLC-MS, Chromatography, Mass Spectroscopy, Hyphenated Techniques, Forensic Science
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Analytical Sciences, Methods and Instrumentation,
Vol.8 No.1,
March
29,
2018
ABSTRACT: Drugs are traditionally been identified on basis of
chromatographic-spectroscopic hyphenated techniques in instrumental analysis.
Gas chromatography (GC) and Liquid chromatography (LC) hyphenated with mass
spectroscopy (MS) i.e. GC-MS and
LC-MS give reliable and confirmatory results in drugs identification. In the
present work the novel hyphenated technique High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography-Mass
Spectroscopy (HPTLC-MS) has been used. This technique provides efficient, quick
and simple method for identification and separation of Narcotic drugs and psychotropic
substances. The drugs under study are Papaverine, Methadone, Cocaine, Ketamine,
Caffeine, Codeine, Diazepam, Thebaine, Heroin, Methamphetamine, Carbamazepine,
Morphine, Narcotine and Ephedrine. The present study comprising of sixteen
drugs has been carried out on CAMAG HPTLC instrument with automatic sampling.
Thin layer chromatography (TLC) plates were developed in various solvent
systems, scanned under TLC scanner and the results in terms of Retention Factor
(Rf value) and UV spectrum (λmax)
are presented in the manuscript. Using hyphenated technique of HPTLC-MS (MS
2020 SHIMADZU) spots of these drugs from TLC plate was lifted
with CAMAG TLC-MS interface and confirmed by the mass spectrum of the
individual drugs by their m/z values
thus delivering fast and accurate confirmatory result on the TLC plate.