Dispersive solid-phase microextraction and capillary electrophoresis separation of food colorants in beverages using diamino moiety functionalized silica nanoparticles as both extractant and pseudostationary phase

In this work, a new method for the determination of food colorants in beverage samples is developed, using diamino moiety functionalized silica nanoparticles (dASNPs) as both adsorbents in dispersive solid-phase microextraction (dSPME) and pseudostationary phases (PSPs) in capillary electrophoresis (CE) separation. dASNPs were firstly used as adsorbents for the preconcentration of four colorants by the dSPME process. After that, colorants were efficiently separated by CE using 30 mM phosphate buffer (pH 6.0) containing 2 mM beta-CD and 0.9 mg/mL dASNPs as additives. All factors influencing dSPME and CE separations were optimized in detail. The investigated analytes showed good linearities with correlation coefficients (R-2) higher than 0.9932. The limits of detection for the four food colorants were between 0.030 and 0.36 mg/L, which are lower than those reported previously. The established method was also used to analyze four colorants in beverage samples with recoveries ranging from 82.7% to 114.6%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to use NPs both as extractants in dSPME and pseudostationary phases in CE for the analytical purpose. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.