[Analysis of volatile oil in Illicium verum fruit by on-line coupled packed capillary liquid chromatography/capillary gas chromatography].

Volatile oil in Illicillm Verum Fruit was analyzed by on-line coupled packed capillary high performance liquid chromatography/capillary gas chromatography (micro-HPLC-CGC). A micro-HPLC column of 250 mm x 0.32 mm i.d. packed with 5 microm cyano-bonded silica stationary phase was used for group separation. n-Hexane/acetonitrile/dichloromethane (80:8:12, v/v) was used as mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.8 microL/min. Five groups of eluents from the micro-HPLC were collected and stored in a multi-loop interface, which were then transferred to a capillary gas chromatograph sequentially for further analysis. A 10 m x 0.53 mm i.d. retention gap connected with a 30 m x 0.53 mm i.d. x 1.0 microm SE-54 analytical column was used for CGC analysis. In-column splitless injection mode was adopted for better quantitation and manipulation of chromatograms. Five chromatograms were obtained and compared with the result of direct CGC analysis of the same sample. It was found that there were at least 3 new compounds that were not found nor separated before by conventional capillary gas chromatography/mass spectrometry method.