Separation and determination of magnolol and honokiol in Magnolia officinalis bark by capillary zone electrophoresis

The effects of pH on separation parameters such as migration mobility, resolution, sensitivity, column efficiency and peak shape were emphatically studied. Better separation of magnolol and honokiol using capillary zone electrophoresis was achieved by optimizing pH in the range 5.0-11.7. The influences of applied voltage and temperature were also investigated. We adopted a better sample extraction procedure by which higher contents of honokiol and magnolol with sample compositions unchanged were obtained. The analysis was performed with direct UV detection using a 10 mM borate-10 mM phosphate buffer at pH of 11.6. The method was successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of magnolol and honokiol in Magnolia officinalis bark within 9 min.