Sensitive determination of sertraline by capillary electrophoresis with dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction and field-amplified sample stacking

A novel method for the determination of sertraline using dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled with capillary electrophoresis (CE) was developed. Acetone and dichloromethane were used as the disperser solvent and extraction solvent, respectively. A mixture of the extraction and disperser solvents was rapidly injected into a 1.0 mL aqueous sample to form a cloudy solution. After the extraction, sertraline was analyzed using CE that was equipped with UV detection. A 74-fold improvement in the sensitivity was observed when DLLME was used to extract sertraline. Since the DLLME extract residue was redissolved with 5 μL of water that contained 20% methanol, the detection sensitivity was further enhanced through the use of field-amplified sample stacking (FASS). A 11-fold improvement in the sensitivity was obtained when FASS was used to on-line concentrate sertraline. Under optimal extraction and stacking conditions, the calibration curve, which ranged from 0.01 to 1 μM was observed to be linear. The limit of detection (LOD) at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3 was 2.5 nM for sertraline. An approximately 814-fold improvement in the sensitivity was observed for sertraline compare with injection of standard solution without the DLLME and FASS procedures. This developed method was successfully applied to the determination of sertraline in human urine samples.