Determination of puerarin and daidzein in Puerariae radix and its medicinal preparations by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography with electrochemical detection

The use of micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MECC) with electrochemical detection is described for the determination of puerarin and daidzein in Puerariae radix and its medicinal preparations. Operated in a wall-jet configuration, a 300 mum diameter carbon-disk electrode was used as the working electrode, which exhibits good responses at +900 mV (versus SCE) for the two analytes. Under the optimum conditions, the analytes were base-line separated within 11 min in a sodium dodecyl sulphate-borax (pH 7.8) running buffer, and excellent linearity was obtained in the concentration range from 5.0 x 10(-4) to 5.0 x 10(-6) mol/l. The detection limit (S/N = 3) was 6 x 10(-7) and 1.1 X 10(-6) mol/l for puerarin and daidzein, respectively. This work provides a useful method for the analysis of traditional Chinese medicines. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.