Simultaneous chiral analysis of amphetamine‐type stimulants and ephedrine by capillary electrophoresis coupled to time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This study focused on the chiral characteristics of methamphetamine seizures in Shanghai for inferring the synthetic pathways of drugs. Capillary electrophoresis coupled to time-of-flight mass spectrometry was used for simultaneous chiral separation of amphetamine-type stimulants and ephedrine, including S(+)-amphetamine/R(-)-amphetamine, S(+)-methamphetamine/R(-)-methamphetamine, (±)-MDA (3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine), (±)-MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), (±)-MDEA (3,4-methylenedioxy-N-ethylamphetamine), d,l-N-ethylamphetamine, methylephedrine/methylpseudoephedrine, and 1S,2R(+)-ephedrine/(-)-ephedrine. The running buffer was 50-mM ammonium formate (pH 2.2 was adjusted by 1-M formic acid) containing 0.26% highly sulfated γ-cyclodextrin as the chiral selector. All enantiomers were well resolved within 40 minutes by capillary electrophoresis at 20 kV in an uncoated fused-silica capillary (50-μm I.D. × 375-μm O.D. × 90-cm length) and detected by micro time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Twenty seized methamphetamine samples were determined by the established method. They were classified into two groups through their chiral characteristics.