On-line capillary electrophoresis-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry using a polymerized anionic surfactant.

On-line capillary electrophoresis-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (CE-ESI-MS) has been used to determine the tricyclic antidepressant drugs (imipramine, doxepin, and amitriptyline) as well as the beta-adrenergic blocker drugs (propranolol and alprenolol). A CE-ESI-MS interface linking a manually operated CE system and a Finnigan MAT-900 sector mass spectrometer (with an Analytica electrospray ionization source) has been constructed in-house and employed for this study. Although a water/methanol based capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) buffer was initially used to determine these analytes, enhanced resolution was obtained by addition of a polymerized surfactant, i.e., poly-sodium undecylenic sulfate (poly-SUS), into the electrokinetic chromatography (EKC) buffer. When a low concentration of this poly-SUS surfactant was added to a volatile EKC buffer, these structurally similar cationic drugs were EKC separated and on-line detected by ESI-MS.