Simultaneous separation and on-line concentration of amitrole and benzimidazole pesticides by capillary electrophoresis with a volatile migration buffer applicable to mass spectrometric detection

This study used capillary electrophoresis (CE) to investigate the simultaneous separation and on-line concentration of five pesticides: amitrole (AMT), carbendazim (MBC), 2-aminobenzimidazole (ABI), thiabendazole (TBZ) and 1,2-diaminobenzene (DAB). A volatile migration buffer was used for the investigation because of the applicability to mass spectrometric (MS) detection. They were separated completely at pH 4.0 as a result of changing pH using formic acid–ammonium formate buffer. Values of the dissociation constant for MBC and DAB estimated from the changes in the mobility with pH showed good agreement with values in the literature. Dissociation constants for AMT and TBZ were estimated. Limits of detection (LODs) for the analytes were on the ppm level with UV detection under the optimized separation condition. On-line concentration by simple stacking mode was not effective except to 2-aminobenzimidazole because of the peak tailing. The addition of formic acid to sample matrix improved the peak shapes. That improvement may be attributed to transient isotachophoretic effect. The concentration factors obtained from the comparison of the LODs were in the range of 7.6–27-fold. This concentration method was applied preliminarily to CE with MS detection.