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- Andersson, Kjell, et al.
(författare)
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Development of a harmonised method for the profiling of amphetamines : III. Development of the gas chromatographic method
- 2007
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Ingår i: Forensic Science International. - : Elsevier. - 0379-0738 .- 1872-6283. ; 169:1, s. 50-63
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study focused on gas chromatographic analysis of target compounds found in illicit amphetamine synthesised by the Leuckart reaction, reductive amination of benzyl methyl ketone, and the nitrostyrene route. The analytical method was investigated and optimised with respect to introduction of amphetamine samples into the gas chromatograph and separation and detection of the target substances. Sample introduction using split and splitless injection was tested at different injector temperatures, and their ability to transfer the target compounds to the GC column was evaluated using cold on column injection as a reference. Taking the results from both techniques into consideration a temperature of 250 °C was considered to be the best compromise. The most efficient separation was achieved with a DB-35MS capillary column (35% diphenyl 65% dimethyl silicone; 30 m × 0.25 mm, df 0.25 μm) and an oven temperature program that started at 90 °C (1 min) and was increased by 8 °C/min to 300 °C (10 min). Reproducibility, repeatability, linearity, and limits of determination for the flame ionisation detector (FID), nitrogen phosphorous detector (NPD), and mass spectrometry (MS) in scan mode and selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode were evaluated. In addition, selectivity was studied applying FID and MS in both scan and SIM mode. It was found that reproducibility, repeatability, and limits of determination were similar for FID, NPD, and MS in scan mode. Moreover, the linearity was better when applying FID or NPD whereas the selectivity was better when utilising the MS. Finally, the introduction of target compounds to the GC column when applying injection volumes of 0.2 μl, 1 μl, 2 μl, and 4 μl with splitless injection respectively 1 μl with split injection (split ratio, 1:40) were compared. It was demonstrated that splitless injections of 1 μl, 2 μl, and 4 μl could be employed in the developed method, while split injection and splitless injections of 0.2 μl should be avoided.
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3. |
- Andersson, Kjell, et al.
(författare)
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Development of a harmonised method for the profiling of amphetamines VI : Evaluation of methods for comparison of amphetamine
- 2007
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Ingår i: Forensic Science International. - : Elsevier. - 0379-0738 .- 1872-6283. ; 169:1, s. 86-99
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Amphetamine samples were analysed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), and the peak areas of 33 target compounds were transformed by applying various pretreatment techniques. The objective was to optimise the ability of a number of distance metrics to establish links between samples of amphetamine originating from the same batch (henceforth refered to as linked distances). Furthermore, partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was used to evaluate the effects of various pretreatment methods on separation of amphetamine batches synthesised by the Leuckart reaction, reductive amination of benzyl methyl ketone, and the nitrostyrene route. The most efficient way to pretreat GC–MS data varied for the different distance metrics, although best results were obtained when data were normalised to the sum of peak areas, and either the fourth root or a logarithm was applied to the normalised data. When pretreating normalised data by fourth root transformation, Pearson correlation was the distance metric that was most successful at finding linked samples. Normalisation and the use of fourth root also represented the best method of pretreating data when employing PLS-DA to separate samples synthesised by different routes. To achieve a faster and more user-friendly procedure for evaluating chromatograms, experiments were performed in which the number of target compounds used to compare samples was reduced. The effect of each compound that was removed was studied by applying PLS-DA and by using Pearson correlation to calculate linked distances as well as unlinked distances (between samples from different batches of amphetamine). Considering both links between samples from the same batch and separation of samples synthesised by different routes, the best results were obtained with the data set comprising 26 compounds. Finally, it was found that the profiling method developed in this work was superior to an existing technique with respect to separating linked and unlinked distances.
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