Determination of amlodipine enantiomers in pharmaceuticals using capillary electrophoresis separation and diode array detection

The present work describes a capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) separation technique coupled with on-capillary diode array detector (DAD) for highly reliable enantioselective determination of amlodipine (AML) in commercial tablets. For the separation of AML enantiomers, (2-hydroxypropyl)-β-cyclodextrin (HP-β-CD) was an appropriate chiral selector providing complete enantioresolution. Optimized separation conditions consisted of 50 mmol/l glycine-acetate buffer, pH 3.2, 50 mg/ml HP-β-CD. Hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC, 0.2% w/v) served as an electroosmotic flow (EOF) suppressor in this buffer. DAD detection was used for the characterization of the composition of separated zones according to differences in corresponding UV-VIS spectra (scanned in interval 200–800 nm). It was demonstrated, comparing reference and real spectra of the analytes, that the proposed separation method was selective enough to produce pure (non-mixed, i.e. spectrally homogeneous) analyte zones without any interfering compound. Successful validation and application of the proposed CZE-DAD method suggest its routine use in enantioselective control of AML in pharmaceuticals.