Dispersive solvent-free ultrasound-assisted ionic liquid dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction coupled with HPLC for determination of ulipristal acetate.

In this paper, a simple and efficient ultrasound-assisted ionic liquid dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (UA IL-DLLME) coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography for the analysis of ulipristal acetate (UPA) was developed. UPA could be easily migrated into 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate [C8mimPF6] IL phase without dispersive solvent. The research of extraction mechanism showed that hydrophobic interaction force played a key role in the IL-DLLME. Several important parameters affecting the extraction recovery were optimized. Under the optimized conditions, 25-fold enrichment factor was obtained and the limit of detection (LOD) was 6.8 ng mL(-1) (tablet) or 9.3 ng mL(-1) (serum) at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3. The calibration curve was linear over the range of 0.03-6.0 µg mL(-1). The proposed method was successfully applied to the UPA tablets and the real mice serum samples.