Chiral separation of phenylalanine and tryptophan by capillary electrophoresis using a mixture of β-CD and chiral ionic liquid ([TBA] [L-ASP]) as selectors.

In this paper, a simple, effective and green capillary electrophoresis separation and detection method was developed for the quantification of underivatized amino acids (dl-phenylalanine; dl-tryptophan) using β-Cyclodextrin and chiral ionic liquid ([TBA] [l-ASP]) as selectors. Separation parameters such as buffer concentrations, pH, β-CD and chiral ionic liquid concentrations and separation voltage were investigated for the enantioseparation in order to achieve the maximum possible resolution. A good separation was achieved in a background electrolyte composed of 15 mm sodium tetraborate, 5 mm β-CD and 4 mm chiral ionic liquid at pH 9.5, and an applied voltage of 10 kV. Under optimum conditions, linearity was achieved within concentration ranges from 0.08 to 10 µg/mL for the analytes with correlation coefficients from 0.9956 to 0.9998, and the analytes were separated in less than 6 min with efficiencies up to 970,000 plates/m. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of amino acid enantiomers in compound amino acids injections, such as 18AA-I, 18AA-II and 3AA.